An efficient electrode scheme is developed to enhance the inline detector performance of a 1.55 μm, InP-InGaAsP, Traveling Wave-Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (TW-SOA). A traveling wave approach is used to determine the voltage developed along the length of the TWSOA, accurately. A single electrode along the entire length of the device and a single, short length electrode kept at certain distance from the front facet are investigated, for input optical power levels ranging from -25 dBm to +5 dBm. Efficient position of the single electrode along the cavity length is determined for maximum detected voltage. Under this scheme, the inline detector with an electrode length of 100 μm positioned at 200 μm from the front facet, is found to provide a improvement of 6 dB and 8 dB in detected voltage for 40 mA and 50 mA bias respectively, at -10 dBm input, when compared with the maximum detected voltage reported in the literature. © 2012 Elsevier GmbH.