This part of IEC 61292, which is a Technical Report, describes the characteristic features of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), including the specific features of gain ripple and polarization dependent gain (PDG).

This document focuses on amplifying applications of SOAs. Other applications, such as modulation, switching and non-linear functions, are not covered.

Potential applications of SOAs, such as reflective SOAs (RSOAs) for the seeded wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON), are reviewed in Annex A.