This article presents an experimental characterization of the impact of nonlinear impairments induced by semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) in a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) coherent communication system. Motivated by a ceaseless traffic growth in optical transport systems, extending the bandwidth of the fiber link is a promising way to increase the throughput in optical networks. Using specific design, SOA can provide ultra-wideband (UWB) and continuous amplification spreading from S to L bands. For both off-the-shelf C-band SOA and UWB SOA devices, we show that SOA nonlinear impairments are not critical in the WDM regime. We report on the impact of the WDM channel count on the nonlinear distortions induced by an UWB SOA. We also demonstrate that besides having a wider bandwidth, our custom UWB SOA devices have superior performance compared to off-the shelf components even for C-band only transmission, and are well suited for wideband WDM signal amplification.

中文翻译：

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WDM 模式下半导体光放大器非线性失真的实验表征

本文介绍了由半导体光放大器 (SOA) 在波分复用 (WDM) 相干通信系统中引起的非线性损伤影响的实验表征。受光传输系统流量不断增长的推动，扩展光纤链路的带宽是增加光网络吞吐量的一种很有前途的方法。通过特定的设计，SOA 可以提供超宽带 (UWB) 和从 S 到 L 波段的连续放大扩展。对于现成的 C 波段 SOA 和 UWB SOA 设备，我们表明 SOA 非线性损伤在 WDM 机制中并不重要。我们报告了 WDM 通道数对 UWB SOA 引起的非线性失真的影响。我们还证明，除了拥有更宽的带宽之外，