Experimental and theoretical analysis of efficient erbium-doped fiber power amplifiers

The efficiency of Er/sup 3+/-doped fiber power amplifiers (EDFAs) pumped at 980 nm was experimentally investigated and quantum conversion efficiencies (QCE) up to 0.89 were achieved. The experiment was accurately simulated by a computer model using only measured input parameters. The model was further used in an analysis of power amplifiers pumped at 980 and 1480 nm that included waveguide optimization and Er/sup 3+/ confinement. The QCE can be enhanced by increasing the numerical aperture (NA) and confining the Er/sup 3+/ ions to the central region of the core. At pump powers typically used for packaged EDFAs (25-100 mW). QCE can be improved by up to 60% by increasing the NA from 0.15 to 0.25, and confined Er/sup 3+/ doping can provide an improvement of up to 20%. However, NA and Er/sup 3+/ confinement have insignificant effects on the noise figure when both the cutoff wavelength and the fiber length are optimized with respect to QCE.<>