A novel, to the best of our knowledge, performance-enhanced laser heterodyne radiometer has been developed by utilizing a semiconductor optical amplifier to amplify the collected weak solar radiation in an optical fiber. High-spectral-resolution measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide column absorption are used to validate the technique and performance of the developed instrument. The implementation of optical amplification led to a 9-times improvement in sensitivity according to the Allan variance analysis for noise fluctuations, and resulted in a 7.7-times enhancement in measurement precision for atmospheric carbon dioxide. The promising results showed the great potential of employing this type of compact fiber-optics-based spectral radiometer for applications such as atmospheric greenhouse gas sensing. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group