Novel Gain Spectrum Control Method Employing Gain Clamping and Pump Power Adjustment in Thulium-Doped Fiber Amplifier

In this paper, we propose a novel method for controlling the gain spectrum of a thulium-doped fiber amplifier (TDFA) in the S-band. The conventional gain spectrum control method used for a silica erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) cannot be applied to TDFAs because of the complicated fluctuation of the TDFA gain spectrum. Our proposed method controls the gain spectrum by a combination of gain clamping and pump power adjustment. The algorithm for the method is as simple as that for the conventional EDFA gain spectrum control method. Furthermore, we describe a function for correcting the gain excursion generated by the incorporation of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) at a signal monitoring photodiode (PD). We achieved a gain excursion of 0.35 dB against a total input signal power of 32 to 2 dBm.