Optical regeneration using a feedforward semiconductor optical amplifier with chirp‐controlled filtering

Optical pulse regeneration and reshaping using nonlinear optical pulse amplification followed by a chirp‐controlled filtering is simulated. The nonlinear amplification and chirp control are obtained by feedforward current injection in a semiconductor optical amplifier. The nonlinear amplification provides pulse regeneration, and the controlled chirp, in association with an optical frequency discriminator, can be used to optimize the shape of several Gbit/s pulse streams. The simulator model has been confirmed experimentally using eye diagram techniques. In addition, the switching action of an optical semiconductor amplifier with a dynamically arbitrarily injected current can be simulated. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 30: 438–442, 2001.