Impact of the Gain Saturation Dynamics in Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers on the characteristics of an Analog Optical Link

International audienceWe evaluate both theoretically and experimentally the gain saturation dynamics of Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (SOA) when inserted into an analog optical link. Its impact in terms of RF frequency response, nonlinearity and noise is investigated. In particular, the frequency response is shown to be a peculiar high pass filter exhibiting two characteristic frequencies