The recovery of an optical carrier with the deletion of its amplitude modulation is introduced using a deeply saturated ultra-long semiconductor optical amplifier (UL-SOA). The experimental results were achieved for input signal bit rates up to 12.5 Gbps with high extinction ratio (up to 13.9 dB). The influence of parameters such as UL-SOA bias current, optical bandwidth, signal input power, modulation depth and bit rate are analyzed including the carrier spectral broadening effects due to the self-phase modulation effect.