Transient Behavior of EDFA Stages Using Pump Power Splitting or Pump Bypass Technique

Power transients in optical networks impose challenging requirements on the design and control of optical amplifiers. In addition, reducing amplifier cost has become mandatory. Therefore, setups using a single pump to supply pump power to several coils of erbium-doped fibers (EDFS) have become attractive. In most cases, the so-called pump bypass technique is employed, but pump power splitting also constitutes a favorable solution. Both techniques are compared with respect to their transient behavior. The investigations focus on the characteristics of the optical setup representing the control path. Appropriate scenarios are considered to take into account the influence of feedforward and feedback control techniques. Simulation results reveal that the pump power splitting approach is favorable with respect to a feedback control, whereas there are no significant differences with respect to feedforward approaches