Low Complexity Compensation of SOA Nonlinearity for Single-Channel PSK and OOK

Carrier density fluctuations in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) impose penalties on phase-shift keying (PSK) signals due to nonlinear phase noise (NLPN), and on-off keying (OOK) signals due to self-gain modulation. In this paper, we propose a simple scheme to equalize the impairments induced by SOA nonlinearities, derived from the small signal analysis of carrier density fluctuations. We demonstrate via simulation almost complete cancelation of the NLPN added by a saturated SOA on a differential PSK signal. We demonstrate via both simulations and experiment the effectiveness of the method for mitigation of nonlinear distortions imposed by SOAs on an OOK signal.