High-power optical amplifiers for commercial analog and digital applications

We demonstrate a record power budget of 67.4 dB for a 2.5 Gbit/s system operating over nondispersion-shifted (NDS) fiber using commercial SONET OC-48 systems and without the use of remotely pumped amplifiers. We also report on the commercial deployment of a 2.5 Gbit/s, 186-km (NDS-fiber) span in New Mexico, the longest in the United States to the best of our knowledge. This span is part of a US WEST SONET ring, which serves the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Johnson Space Center in the White Sands Missile Range, and the CASA supercomputer link between Los Alamos and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Results of a field experiment in which 80 AM-VSB video channels are optically amplified, broadcast to 16 central offices located 40 km (NDS fiber) away, wavelength-division multiplexed with a local 1310-nm signal containing an additional 80 channels of analog video and transmitted an additional 10 km (NDS fiber) are also presented.