Trends in Opto Electro & Optical Communications Analysis of Saturation Power Based on Device Structural Parameters of a 1550 nm Symmetrical MQW Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

Abstract

This paper presents the effect of device structure parameters on the saturation power of a1550 nm symmetrical Multi Quantum Well (MQW) Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA)for an amplifier gain of 30 dB. Expressions are given to assess this dependency and the resultsindicate that saturation power decreases with the increase of the number of wells, wellthickness and length but increases with the increase of barrier thickness. Higher number ofwells, relatively large well thickness and length with a barrier thickness closer to the wellthickness should be chosen for all optical switching and wavelength conversion. The findingsof this work can aid SOA design for nonlinear functional devices