Performance-driven wideband semiconductor optical amplifier design with controlled gain saturation for next-gen bidirectional dense wavelength division multiplexing networking

This research presents a bidirectional dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) design utilizing 16 channels with 100 GHz spacing at 20 Gbps. The proposed system incorporates a controlled gain-saturated wideband semiconductor optical amplifier in a multi-amplifier link. The system achieves −15 log bit error rate (BER), gain ripples between 0.09 and 0.36 dB, extinction ratio (ER) of 17.616 dB, Q-factor of 18.06, and optical signal-to-noise ratio of 34.08 dB. The gain equalizer successfully reduces gain ripples from ∼12 dB to >0.4 dB, ensuring a flat and uniform gain profile across wavelength division multiplexing channels. This approach effectively mitigates gain fluctuations shown by ripples, enhances signal stability indicated by ER and BER, and improves overall system performance. Hence, it can be taken as a feasible solution for DWDM networks.