Effect of Electrical Filtering on Level Dependent ASE Noise

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical model to understand how electrical filtering impacts ASE noise in optical systems, revealing counter-intuitive effects on signal quality and validating findings with experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytical model that accurately predicts the influence of electrical filtering on ASE noise, supported by numerical and experimental validation.

Findings

Electrical filtering can reduce signal quality by increasing noise levels.

Counter-intuitive dependencies of signal quality on test setup characteristics.

Model predictions align well with numerical simulations and experimental data.

Abstract

We derive an analytical model describing the effect of filtering on amplified spontaneous emission noise during or after opto-electronic conversion. In particular, we show that electrical filtering results in a further reduction of the signal quality factor associated with an effective increase of the noise levels and can lead to counter-intuitive dependencies of the measured signal quality on the characteristics of the test setup. Closed form equations are compared with numerical models and experiments, showing excellent agreement.