LONG-HAUL HIGH-SPEED OPTICAL COMMUNICATION-SYSTEMS USING A SEMICONDUCTOR-LASER AMPLIFIER

High-speed long-haul systems using semiconductor laser amplifiers, which eliminate the need for high-speed electronics in repeaters and are transparent to the transmission speed are considered for application in undersea high-speed transmission systems. The potential of laser-amplifier-repeatered transmission systems has been explored by transmission experiments, showing that a high-speed system above 2 Gb is possible by filtering out the spontaneous emission power of the laser amplifier. A theoretical estimation of SNR degradation due to noise accumulation of chained laser amplifiers shows that such systems are possible, using 30 to 40 laser amplifier repeaters, if narrow-bandwidth optical filters are used.