8 x 10 Gb/s DWDM transmission over 240 km of standard fiber using a cascade of semiconductor optical amplifiers

Eight 10-Gb/s DWDM channels spaced 200 GHz around 1565 nm are transmitted over six 40-km spans of standard SMF using five inline semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). SOAs are also used as booster and pre-amplifier in the transmitter and receiver, so that only SOAs are used in the experiment. For all channels, bit-error-rate penalties of 0.5-1.5 dB relative to baseline have been measured, with no evidence of error-rate floors.