Design and fabrication of an asymmetric twin-core fiber directional coupler for gain-flattened EDFA

Fiber directional couplers made of highly asymmetric twin-cores (ATC), one of which is doped with erbium, are designed to achieve an inherently gain flattened erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA). The refractive index profiles of the fibers as well as the spacing between the two cores were carefully designed to achieve a targeted gain with low gain excursions across the C-band. One of the designs yielded a theoretical median gain ~38 dB with an excursion within ±1 dB. In order to suite fabrication of such an inherently gain flattened EDFA by the MCVD fiber preform fabrication process, the design had to be modified and a more modest target of about 20 dB was set with excursion below ±1.5 dB for metro-centric applications. It involved preparation of two independent preforms, which required selective polishing of the cladding from one side by a certain amount to meet the required nominal separation between the two cores set at the design stage of the fiber. Several intricate operations were required to implement the fiber drawing step from the two assembled preforms. Preliminary characterization of the fabricated fiber shows filtering of ASE peak through selective wavelength coupling from Er-doped core to un-doped core.