Optical receiver sensitivity improvement by a semiconductor laser preamplifier

Abstract

Application of a semiconductor laser as a preamplifier in a p.c.m. i.m. fibre-optic transmission system was studied theoretically and experimentally. Experimental results on equalised baseband noise power and error rate performance are in good agreement with new formulation taking spontaneous emission into account. The semiconductor laser preamplifier is found to substantially enhance optical receiver sensitivity.