Multichannel Amplification Characteristics of Saturated Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers,
Abstract
Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) are attractive for various optical fiber transmission systems and networks owing to their several advantages such as high gain and low noise. A EDFA with its high output saturation power and wide gain profile is specially suitable for wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) applications such as multichannel CATV distribution systems 1. In these applications, the EDFA is normally used as a post (or a booster) amplifier and operates at a saturated region. Although it has been demonstrated that the EDFA is immune to patterning effects and interchannel interference, and has low gain saturation induced crosstalk 2, 3, there is little information about effects of wavelength spacing and fiber length in a saturated EDFA for multichannel applications. In this paper, we report the experimental results on wavelength and fiber length dependence of gain for saturated EDFAs in a two-channel amplification system. The experimental results show that when an EDFA operates at the saturated region in a multichannel system, a shorter fiber length than that in single-channel should be selected to get a flat gain profile, and that the Ge/Al/Er-doped silica fiber is desirable for multichannel amplification use since a gain hole-burning is observed for the Ge/Er-doped silica fiber.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 22, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADP006997
Entities
People
- A. Oyobe
- Kensuke Nakamura
- N. Kagi
- Yonghong Cheng