Designing Transmit Optical Amplifiers For The Current Roll Out Of Optical Communication Constellations

By J. Edmunds, N. K. Thipparapu, M. Kechagias, K. Hall, A. Donnot, P. Kean, E. Kehayas, M. Welch, G&H

There is an increasing activity within the space photonics industry as many satellite integrators express interest in incorporating optical links within their satellites due to the benefits that they can offer over traditional RF/microwave technology.

In this paper, we discuss some of optical design challenges of producing optical amplifiers for the current generation of constellations, focusing on key parametric performance challenges of the optical design. As discussed in the abstract, the challenges being discussed here, are the suppression of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) whilst achieving high power amplification at 1536.61nm, the suppression of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), the degradation of the required kHz sinusoid amplitude modulated tracking tone during amplification.