Abstract
An investigation is carried out on high bit-rate pulse propagation through bulk semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and a tunable optical bandpass filter (OBPF) placed at the output of the SOA for the alleviation of patterning of the amplified signal due to gain saturation in SOA. The effect of the OBPF in terms of its central wavelength detuning and bandwidth on the quality of peak power equalization of the output signal is investigated for signal pulsewidth smaller and larger than the critical pulsewidth of the amplifier at bit-rates of 20 and 40 Gb/s, respectively. It is observed that the scheme is highly useful for the signal pulses with width greater than the critical width.