TRANSNET researchers present the first experimental investigation of SOAs for long-haul high-speed communications
In a new paper from Dr Eric Sillekens et al., the first experimental investigation of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) for long-haul high-speed communications is presented. This work supports Eric’s fellowship, investigating energy reduction for optical transmissions systems by introducing low-complexity digital signal processing (DSP), enabling the combined use of SOAs and hollow core optical fibre (HCF). The digital communication infrastructure supporting the internet represents 3% of global power usage, with internet traffic increasing every year. Optical communication systems contribute significantly to this, due to the numerous optical fibre amplifiers used to compensate for signal loss. Eric's research aims to create new communication system architectures with significantly lower energy consumption (30–50% reduction in energy/bit).
The new paper investigates the baseline performance of SOA for long-haul high-speed communication by directly comparing SOAs and erbium-doped fibre amplifiers (EDFAs) in a recirculating loop. For three-channel transmission over distances of up to 2064 km using a recirculating optical fibre loop, there was an observed >5 dB and >2.5 dB penalty in optimal SNR when using the SOAs for 15 GBd and 49.5 GBd channels, respectively. These penalties are attributed to the SOA’s higher noise figure and nonlinearities. At 516 km this equates to a throughput reduction of 28% at optimal launch power, demonstrating the impact of device nonlinearities that needs to be overcome for the development of low power consumption optical transmission systems. This experimental first sets a baseline for long-haul high-speed optical communication using SOAs for inline amplifiers, highlighting an exciting potential for further optimisation and development over the course of Eric’s fellowship.
Useful Links
Sillekens, Eric; Sohanpal, Ronit; Aparecido, Romulo; Buglia, Henrique; Yang, Jiaqian; Killey, Robert I; Bayvel, Polina; (2025) Experimental Demonstration of Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers for 2064 km Link Loss Compensation. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters 10.1109/lpt.2025.3566253