Polarization-Insensitive Semiconductor Optical Preamplifier At 1.55 Mu-M

A high-performance polarisation-independent semiconductor optical amplifier is demonstrated as a preamplifier yielding a sensitivity of -36.5 dBm at 2.5 Gbit/s, measured in the input optical fibre. A polarisation penalty of approximately 0.5 dB is observed. AM crosstalk has been investigated, and the measured penalties suggest simultaneous reception of approximately 12 WDM channels with a penalty of 1 dB.