Evaluation of nonuniform WDM source spacing for EDFA gain characterization

Author

Kulkarni, Shamal ; Medberry, John ; Lear, Kevin L.

Author_Institution

Agilent Technol., Loveland, CO, USA

Volume

14

Issue

6

fYear

2002

fDate

6/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

783

Lastpage

785

Abstract

The accuracy of erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain characterization tests has been evaluated using reduced sets of wavelength-division-multiplexing laser sources. Wavelength grids with both uniform and nonuniform wavelength spacing have been evaluated. Experiments show that it is necessary to maintain equal spectral density of source power per region in order to operate at the same saturation/inversion conditions of the amplifier. By doing so, acceptable results were obtained for a laser configuration with 400-800-GHz nonuniform spacing, employing 12 lasers.

Keywords

erbium; optical communication equipment; optical fibre amplifiers; optical hole burning; population inversion; wavelength division multiplexing; 400-800-GHz nonuniform spacing; ASE spectrum; EDFA gain characterization; WDM laser source reduced sets; accuracy; equal spectral density; erbium-doped fiber amplifier; nonuniform WDM source spacing; nonuniform wavelength spacing; saturation/inversion conditions; source power; spectral hole burning; uniform wavelength spacing; wavelength grids; Costs; Erbium-doped fiber amplifier; Erbium-doped fiber lasers; Laser noise; Optical amplifiers; Optical attenuators; Power amplifiers; Power measurement; System testing; Wavelength division multiplexing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2002.1003092

Filename

1003092