Gain scheduling control design of an erbium-doped fibre amplifier by pump compensation

Channel add or drop in a reconfigurable wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) transmission network produces undesirable transients in the existing channels due to erbium-doped fibre amplifier´s (EDFA´s) dynamics. We demonstrate a gain scheduling scheme on a PID controller that minimizes the effect of transients by clamping the total EDFA gain of the signal channels through pump power compensation. The scheduled controller requires only three easily accessible parameters: the total input power, the desired and instantaneous total EDFA gains of the signals. This scheduling scheme can stabilize the output signals from an EDFA in less than 1 ms when there is up to 90% drop in the total input signal power. Simulation results for 10 wavelength-division multiplexed channels transmission are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the gain scheduling scheme