Spectrum-sliced fiber amplifier light source for multichannel WDM applications

A potentially inexpensive light source for multichannel WDM applications is proposed. The high-power amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), which is already in the single-mode fiber, can be efficiently divided into many channels by using an integrated optic wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) demultiplexer. This spectrum-sliced ASE can be used as light sources for WDM systems in place of several wavelength-selected DFB lasers. To demonstrate the principle, the 40-nm-wide ASE spectrum of an EDFA was sliced using a narrow optical filter (3-dB bandwidth: 1.3 nm), and the resulting source was used for the transmission of up to 1.7 Gb/s of data. The problem of spontaneous-spontaneous beat noise in these sources is dealt with. It is estimated that the total capacity would be about 40 Gb/s, realistically, since the channel spacing should be at least three times the optical bandwidth of each channel to avoid crosstalk.<>