Fundamentals of optical amplifiers

The minimum noise figure of linear phase-insensitive amplifiers is 3 dB, according to the constraint of the uncertainty principle. Laser amplifiers, parametric amplifiers and Raman amplifiers obey the general quantum limit in an ideal case. A degenerate parametric amplifier is a phase-sensitive linear amplifier, and thus is a noiseless amplifier with a noise figure of 0 dB. The noise figure degradation in a practical amplifier and the signal-to-noise ratio design of an optical amplifier system are presented. Several other amplifier characteristics, such as signal gain, frequency bandwidth and saturation output power, are also discussed.     

Investigation of the optical gain and noise figure for multi-channel amplification in EDFA under optimized pump condition

We present the results of an investigation of optical gain and noise figure for simultaneous multi-channel amplification of an erbium doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) under optimized pump condition. Different pump configurations with varying input signal levels show interesting features on gain flatness. In the experiment, population inversion along the fibre length which determines the gain-spectra and noise characteristics of the amplifier is adjusted through optimized fibre length and injected pump power in order to minimize the gain-tilt at C-band. It is observed that bi-directional pumping manifests the best combination of low noise and high gain of EDFA which are useful as in-line repeaters in WDM network. We obtain 30 ± 1.5 dB intrinsically flat small signal gain from 1538 nm to 1558 nm band of wavelength with noise figure <4 dB for 16-channel simultaneous amplification in a single stage EDFA without gain flattening filter.     

掺铒孔辅助导光光纤的特性研究与优化设计

掺铒孔辅助导光光纤是由掺铒的高折射率纤芯、低折射率包层和少量的空气孔组成. 采用有限元法分析了掺铒孔辅助导光光纤的模式特性；给出了数值计算截止波长和模场直径的方法；提出了改进的平均粒子数反转度迭代算法来数值计算掺铒光纤放大器的增益和噪声系数. 研究空气孔对掺铒孔辅助导光光纤的截止波长、模场直径和放大器的增益系数的影响. 发现：减小相对孔芯距的值，可使截止波长向短波长移动，减小模场直径的值；当孔的相对大小较大时，截止波长、模场直径和增益的最大值基本上不随孔的相对大小的增大而改变. 最后，综合考虑掺铒光纤基模和二阶模的截止波长、与普通单模光纤的熔接损耗、放大器的增益和噪声系数等因素，优化设计了掺铒孔辅助导光光纤的四个结构参量——纤芯半径、纤芯与包层的折射率差、相对孔芯距和孔的相对大小. 关键词： 孔辅助导光光纤 掺铒光纤 光纤放大器 有限元法     

Noise performance analysis of bi-directionally pumped distributed fiber Raman amplifiers with consideration of fiber nonlinearity and its impact on EDFA output OSNR

Under small-signal assumption, equivalent noise figure normalized by fiber nonlinearities (NENF) of bi-directionally pumped distributed fiber Raman amplifiers (BiDFRA) is derived. Amplified spontaneous Raman scattering noise and double Rayleigh scattering noise are both included. The relation between NENF and Raman gain, forward Raman gain percentage is investigated under different polarization factor and Rayleigh scattering coefficient. It agrees well with numerical simulation results. Based on the analytical expression, the optical signal-to-nose ratio (OSNR) improvement of hybrid pre-BiDFRA/erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) compared with sole EDFA is studied. It is shown that there is an optimum Raman gain and forward Raman gain percentage to maximize the OSNR improvement. Finally, some guidelines on BiDFRA design are proposed.     

Copropagating and counterpropagating pumps in second-order- pumped discrete fiber Raman amplifiers

The gains and noise figures of discrete second-order-pumped fiber Raman amplifiers utilizing copropagating and counterpropagating pump configurations were experimentally obtained, and the gain results were compared with computer simulations. It was found that the additional gain that is due to second-order Raman pumping is larger for the copropagating pumps than for the counterpropagating pumps, in agreement with simulations. In contrast to distributed second-order-pumped fiber Raman amplifiers, a slight increase in noise figure, by as much as ~1 dB was observed relative to the single-pump scheme. However, the advantages of second-order pumping in discrete amplifiers include greater flexibility in design of the gain distribution along the fiber and the ability to spectrally distribute the pump powers to avoid undesired nonlinear effects.     

掺铒光纤放大器的理论模拟与全局分析

基于Giles模型并考虑了ASE噪音,对各种泵浦方式下的掺铒光纤放大器(EDFA)进行了数值模拟.提出了一种新的分析方法(增益噪音指数全局分析法),直观有效地分析了EDFA的增益和噪音指数与掺铒光纤长度和泵浦功率的依赖关系,并对各种EDFA的性能作了全面的比较.     

37.2 dB small-signal gain from Er/Yb Co-doped fiber amplifier with 20 mW pump power

An efficient erbium–ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier (EYDFA) is demonstrated by forward and backward pumping a 3 m erbium/ytterbium co-doped fibers (EYDF) in single- and double-pass configurations using a 20 mW pump. At the input signal wavelength of 1536 nm, the forward- and backward-pumped double-pass amplifiers achieved a maximum low-signal gain of 37.2 and 28.6 dB and a corresponding noise figure of 5.4 and 10.8 dB, respectively. Whereas, the forward- and backward-pumped single-pass amplifiers (at the same wavelength) achieved a maximum low-signal gain of 20.0 and 22.2 dB and a corresponding noise figure of 4.6 and 10.3 dB, respectively. The double-pass design offers an economical solution to high-efficiency and high-gain optical amplifiers.     

Gain and Noise figure performance of erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) and Compact EDFAs

In this paper, we compare the Gain and Noise figure characteristics of physical EDFAs and Compact EDFAs in an optical system consisting of cascade of both the amplifiers. We demonstrate the gain, noise figure variations of a forward pumped EDFA and Compact EDFAs as functions of Er³⁺ fiber length, injected pump power and up-conversion co-efficient. It is observed that the gain becomes constant when the length of both the amplifiers reaches above 20 m. The comparison shows that the higher gain with flatter output is obtained in case of Compact EDFAs than Physical EDFAs in a system consisting of chain of both the amplifiers. It is further investigated that the agreement between the Compact and Physical EDFA models is good up to 10 m with the no up-conversion co-efficient. Also, the noise figure obtained in case of Physical EDFA is higher than Compact EDFAs when same amplifier length is more than 20 m and then becomes constant for both the amplifiers.     

A neural network model of erbium-doped photonic crystal fibre amplifiers

The evaluation of the general evolution equations that describe the longitudinal propagation of pump, signal, forward and backward amplified spontaneous emission in rare-earth-doped optical fibre amplifier could be computationally expensive. In this paper, to reduce the computational time, a neural network approach for the modeling of erbium-doped photonic crystal fibre amplifiers is proposed. A number of simulations have been performed to investigate the characteristics of the proposed approach. The numerical results show good agreement between the neural network approach and the conventional algorithm based on the solution of the power evolution equations. The proposed approach exhibits attractive performance in terms of flexibility, accuracy and computational time.     

Effect of Cascading Amplification Stages on the Performance of Serial Hybrid Fiber Amplifier

Abstract

This study demonstrates simulation and experimental validation of a wideband serial hybrid Raman/erbium-doped fiber amplifier. Two configurations are adopted; in type A, a Raman amplifier is the first stage, and in type B, an erbium-doped fiber amplifier is the first stage. At low input signal power, the average gain level is 20 dB with a flat gain bandwidth of 40 nm for both configurations. The noise figure in type B is dominated by the erbium-doped fiber amplifier and produces lower values and flatter spectra than in type A. The gain of the proposed hybrid amplifiers is affected more by the second amplification stage.     

基于BP神经网络的图像质量评价参数优化

 在基于噪声图像的无参考峰值信噪比质量评价方法中,为了得到最优的阈值参数,提出以图像块均方误差阈值threshold1、噪声检测阈值threshold2为输入因子, 以Pearson相关系数和Spearman等级相关系数为输出因子, 以实验值为样本建立［2 7 2］单隐层BP神经网络模型,应用BP神经网络的泛化能力实现对相关阈值参数的预测优化,为阈值参数的选择提供理论依据。实验结果表明,所建立的数学模型可靠,预测结果与试验值的偏差小,训练好的BP神经网络能够比较准确地预测不同阈值参数下的相关系数。优化后,选取threshold1=101,threshold2=4,Pearson相关系数达到了-0.895 0,Spearman等级相关系数达到了-0.913 6,评价效果得到提高,且节省大量时间。     

双重瑞利散射导致的多路干涉噪声对光纤喇曼放大器噪声系数的影响

在没有对喇曼增益分布做任何假设的情况下,利用所推导的光纤喇曼放大器噪声系数的解析表达式,研究了不同光纤长度、不同信号输入功率、不同增益、不同瑞利散射下双重瑞利散射导致的多路干涉噪声对喇曼放大器噪声系数的影响.结果表明随着光纤长度,信号输入功率、喇曼增益和瑞利散射的增加,多路干涉噪声对噪声系数的劣化越严重.但通过合理的优化光纤长度、控制喇曼增益可以取得噪声和增益间的最佳平衡.     

基于ADS的2.25GHz低噪声放大器的设计与制作

首先介绍用ADS软件仿真设计S波段低噪声放大器的方法,在仿真过程中,采用带封装模型的原理图-版图联合仿真的方法;然后对制作出的放大器在工作频段2.15—2.35GHz内测试,测试结果和电路仿真结果基本一致:输入输出驻波比均小于1.2,增益达到25dB,且带内增益波动为±0.4dB,噪声为0.7dB;最后对放大器进行了低温(液氮环境)测试,结果表明该放大器在低温下也能正常工作。     

Performance analysis of dual-pump optical parametric amplifiers in silicon waveguide

Nondegenerate Four Wave Mixing (FWM) process in a silicon waveguide is influenced by two photon absorption (TPA), TPA induced free carrier absorption (FCA) besides self-phase modulation (SPM), cross-phase modulation (XPM), SRS, GVD and linear scattering losses. Influences of pump parameters of the dual-pump parametric amplifier (OPA) in the silicon waveguide on gain spectrum and noise figure are numerically investigated. Compared with single-pump configuration, dual-pump silicon OPA indicates a flat gain and noise figure. Then impact of waveguide dispersion on bandwidth and ripples for dual-pump silicon optical parametric amplifiers is discussed. Optimal pump configurations are evaluated. The results show that polarization independent net gain of silicon OPA can be achieved by using circular and orthogonally polarized pump.     

The temperature dependency of EDFAs in the 1480 nm pumping configuration

A theoretical study of the temperature-dependent gain and noise figure effects on erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) pumped at 1480 nm is investigated, solving the propagation equations related to two level systems. The solution of these equations is based on the population and temperature difference among amplification levels. The temperature-dependent propagation equation considered is used to determine the gain and noise figure effects on EDFAs. The population difference depends on pump and signal powers, Boltzmann factor K_B, cross-sections, noise figure (NF) and Er³⁺ concentration. The temperature-dependent gain and noise figure effect the EDFA length are numerically obtained for the temperature range of −20 °C to +60 °C. All of the analyses consist of the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) effect.     

Effect of four-wave mixing in WDM optical fibre systems

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) can both significantly enhance transmission capacity and provide more flexibility in optical network design. Through the use of erbium-doped fibre amplifiers (EDFAs), it is possible to build long-distance transparent optical transmission links without electrical regenerators. In such systems, fibre nonlinearities are likely to impose a transmission limit due to increased total interaction length. There are a number of optical nonlinear effects in optical fibres, such as stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), carrier-induced phase modulation and four-wave mixing (FWM). Out of these SRS and FWM are the dominant effects. In this paper, an algorithm has been suggested to study the effect of FWM in the total system noise considering the combined effect of SRS and FWM in the presence of amplified spontaneous noise (ASE). It has been found from the study that to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of the transmitted signal in a WDM system FWM noise needs to be reduced as this is the dominant noise factor.     

Optimized preamplifiers for pyroelectric detectors

The performance of pyroelectric detectors largely depends on the design of the preamplifier. In this paper the amplifier parameters affecting detector overall performance will be discussed and some design details improving rise time without sacrificing noise figure will be described. Results achieved with two prototype amplifiers will be presented.     

Dynamic Gain-Clamped Amplifier with Backward-Injection of a Fabry-Perot Laser

We have been experimentally demonstrated an active control technique of dynamic gain-clamped spectra for the erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA's) by a backward-injected Fabry-Perot (F-P) laser into this EDFA. In addition, employing a short length erbium-doped fiber (EDF) that not cause any gain saturation for preamplification in front of this amplifier module, it can reduce the noise figure degradation and simultaneously achieve gain variation from 11.1 dB to 0.5 dB for 10 dB input power level change.     

Exact integral solution of saturation and depletion in forward and backward optical fiber Raman amplifiers

Exact integral solutions of forward and backward Raman Stokes-pump interaction are presented. They enable one to determine the gain and depletion characteristics of optical Raman amplifiers, as well as a good approximation of the noise figure, without the need of numerically solving the nonlinear boundary value differential equations governing the Raman interaction.     

Suppression of Output Power and NF Excursions in Cascades of Highly Inverted EDFAs with Packet-Switched Traffic

Significant output power excursions in cascades of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) can cause serious problems in wavelength division multilexing (WDM) packet-switched burst-mode networks. Signal power excursions more serious than those induced by channel addition/removal in circuit switched networks can arise when data on the WDM channels is highly variable in nature. Self-similar traffic can be subject to large variation in EDFA gain. In order to prevent unacceptable error bursts, due, for example, to channel power becoming too low to preserve adequate eye opening or exceeding thresholds for optical nonlinearities, the channel power should be maintained constant. In this letter, it is shown that the sizable power and noise figure swings arising in a cascade of EDFAs with WDM burst-mode packet-switched networks with self-similar traffic can be effectively suppressed when highly inverted amplifiers are employed. The analysis is based on the application of a numerical model, which solves the transcendental equation for length averaged metastable level population of an EDFA.