Lightwave Systems

Daniel A. Fishman, B. Scott Jackson, in Optical Fiber Telecommunications (Third Edition),

Volume B, 1997

3.3.2 Using Optical Amplifiers in a Receiver

One can capitalize on the features that optical amplifiers offer by incorporating them directly into
a receiver design. The most prevalent approaches are to use an optical amplifier as a preamplifier
stage directly in front of a detector and to “remote” an amplifier some distance ahead of a
detector.

3.3.2.1 Optical Amplifiers as Receiver Preamplifiers

There are three primary reasons that optical amplifiers are incorporated into receiver designs: (1)
high sensitivities can be achieved, (2) dynamic range can be improved, and (3) lower cost, lower
complexity high-performance receivers are possible.

Rühl and Ayre (1993) developed explicit expressions for receiver sensitivity of optically
preamplified receivers. Making the conservative assumption that Gaussian statistics apply to all
amplifier and system noise (Marcuse 1990), they derived the minimum average power PAV
required to meet a target BER performance. With this expression in hand and assuming a high-
gain optical amplifier and a perfect extinction ratio, they asserted (with some rearrangement) the
following:

(3.8)PAV=(Q22fbhv)⋅(2nSPLI)⋅(2BElfb+2pBELBOPQfb),

where fb is the bit rate, hv is the energy of a signal photon, nsp is the EDFA spontaneous emission
factor, LI is the optical amplifier input coupling loss, BEL is the electrical bandwidth, p is the
number of polarization states detected, and BOP is the optical bandwidth. Q is related to the
desired BER, where

(3.9)Q=S(1)−S(0)N(1)+N(0)

with S(·) and N(·) being the signal and noise powers detected during a one or a zero.

Note in Eq. (3.8) that the first term is the shot noise limit, the second term is penalties arising
from optical amplifier noise and input losses, and the last term is penalties from excess electrical
and optical bandwidths. At nominal gains, the optical preamplifier noise dominates. A high-
performance receiver is therefore achieved through careful design of the optical preamplifier.

Many optical amplifier architectures offer high gains with noise figures approaching 3 dB.
Optically preamplified receivers achieving −37 dBm sensitivities at 10 Gb/s have been reported,
and outperform the best nonpreamplified receivers by 10 dB. A comprehensive treatment of
optically preamplified receiver design can be found in Park and Granlund (1994).
Optical amplifiers can also be incorporated into receiver designs to improve dynamic range
performance. Optical amplifiers can provide distortion-free variable gain with very wide
equivalent electrical bandwidths. So, instead of designing high-performance ultrawideband
amplifiers to follow the detector in a receiver, a variable gain optical amplifier (an “optical
AGC” amplifier) can be placed before the detector, and a fixed-gain wideband amplifier can
follow the detector (Fig. 3.7). The designer is thus given the freedom to choose receiver
topologies incorporating less expensive or more readily available components. For example,
high-speed receiver designs incorporating low-impedance voltage amplifiers following the
detector can be designed using readily available microwave amplifiers without resorting to
design of custom high-speed transimpedance amplifiers and without sacrificing dynamic range.

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Fig. 3.7. Receiver incorporating an optical preamplifier.

Optical preamplifier gain can be controlled to provide constant optical power to a detector,
which allows the use of existing receiver modules in new applications (path A in Fig. 3.7). The
detected RF signal level can also be used to control gain (path B in Fig. 3.7), which provides for
more constant signal amplitudes to the quantizer as input SNR and total power vary. This latter
topology provides for even greater dynamic range, presenting the quantizer with more consistent
signal levels and reducing impairments that can arise from using fixed quantization thresholds.
Optical AGC can also improve performance by decreasing linear channel changes arising from
power-dependent receiver bandwidths.

3.3.2.2 Remotely Pumped Amplifiers and the Extended Receiver

Another interesting optical amplifier-receiver combination uses a remotely pumped optical

amplifier some distance from the detector (daSilva et al. 1995). Figure 3.8 shows such a receiver.
In this case, pump power propagates counter to the signal direction through the transmission
fiber to excite the EDFA, which provides gain for an incoming signal. With prudent selection of
pump wavelength, power, and fiber type, distributed stimulated Raman gain can also be
maximized to further boost the incoming signal within the transmission fiber carrying the pump
power (daSilva and Simpson 1994). As a result, this interesting hybridization of system and
receiver produces an effective receiver interface at the input of the remote amplifier some
distance from the detector.
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Fig. 3.8. Extended receiver incorporating a remotely pumped optical amplifier.

Often called an extended receiver, this receiver can be designed for the typical receiver
parameters (sensitivity, Q, dynamic range, etc.) at the remote amplifier input. The extended
receiver then contributes to the overall length of the transmission system. Several variants of this
topology, some using separate fiber to deliver the pump power, have been demonstrated.
Receivers operating at 2.5 Gb/s, extending as long as 118 km, and delivering −40 dBm
sensitivities have been demonstrated (Hansen et al. 1995).

REFERENCE

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