ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Phys.
Sec. Optics and Photonics
Reducing Semiconductor Optical Amplifier's Non-linearity Through Probabilistic Amplitude Shaping of Optical QAM Signal
Provisionally accepted
- 1National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan
- 2Hazara University Mansehra, Mansehra, Pakistan
- 3King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
- 4Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy
- 5Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 6Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni, Parma, Italy
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Optical communication is an efficient technology for high-speed, long-distance data transmission. Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are particularly promising for optical signal amplification in O-band transmission due to their compact size, low power consumption, and ease of integration into photonic networks. However, SOA-based systems suffer from nonlinear impairments, which degrade signal quality, especially at higher amplification levels. These nonlinear effects arise from changes in the intrinsic properties of the SOA's waveguide material, such as refractive index variations, when subjected to high optical field intensities. In this paper, we investigate the potential of probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) as a signal-shaping technique to mitigate SOA-induced nonlinearities. PAS leverages a non-uniform probability distribution of constellation points (e.g., QAM symbols) to reduce the average transmit power while maintaining the same information rate. Our simulation results demonstrate that applying PAS to standard QAM signals significantly improves received signal quality, as measured by bit error rate (BER), error vector magnitude (EVM), and mutual information (MI), compared to conventional uniform QAM signa-ling. Furthermore, forward error correction (FEC) is employed to further enhance the system performance.
Keywords: probabilistic amplitude shaping, Bit error rate, Error vector magnitude, mutual information, Semiconductor opticalamplifier
Received: 27 Aug 2025; Accepted: 14 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ahmed, Ghafoor, Aziz, ALJOHANI, Imran, Ijaz and Potì. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Salman Ghafoor, salman.ghafoor@seecs.edu.pk
Muhammad Ijaz, m.ijaz@mmu.ac.uk
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