Spectral Properties of Erbium—Doped Oxyfluoride Silicate Glasses for Broadband Optical Amplifiers

The new oxyfluoride silicate glasses of Er^3 -doped 50SiO2-(50-x) PbO-xPbF2 were prepared. With increasing PbF2 content in the glass composition, the fluorescence full width at half maximum and lifetimes of the ^4I13/2 level of Er^3 increase, while the refractive indices and densities decrease. Er^3 -doped 50SiO2-50PbF2 glass showed broad fluorescence spectra of 1.55μm with a large stimulated emission cross-section and long lifetimes of ^4I13/2 level of Er^3 . Compared with other glass hosts, the gain bandwidth properties of Er^3 -doped 50SiO2-50PbF2 glass are close to those of tellurite and bismuth glasses, and have advantages over those of silicate, phosphate and germante glasses. The broad and flat ^4I13/2→^4I15/2 emission of Er^3 around 1.55μm can be used as host material for potential broadband optical amplifier in wavelength-division-multiplexing network system.     

A Novel Bi-wavelength Method for Accurately Measuring Gain and Noise Characteristics of an Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifier for Multi-Channel Wavelength Division Multiplexing Transmission

Gain and noise figure (NF) are the most important two parameters of an erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) for a multi-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission system. A simple bi-wavelength method for accurate gain and NF spectrum measurement of EDFA for WDM applications is proposed. A saturating input signal, whose power equals to the sum of all the WDM signal power and whose wavelength is determined by the channel numbers and the wavelength of the WDM input signals, saturates the EDFA in a degree as the same as the WDM signals input. Meanwhile, a small power probe signal scans and measures the gain and the NF value at every wavelength of the WDM input signals. Investigative results by numerical simulation show that the gain and the NF spectra measured by this method have good agreement with the real spectra of the WDM signal input in a large total input power range. The maximum errors of the gain and the NF are less than 0.2 dB and 0.16dB, respectively, for a 50-channel input case. The method is competent for the accurate gain and the NF spectrum measurement of the fibre preamplifier and the line-amplifier for WDM applications and has the advantages of simplicity, convenience and easy implement.