Performance comparison of Zr-based and Bi-based erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

Paul, M.C., Harun, S.W., Huri, N.A.D., Hamzah, A., Das, S., Pal, M., Bhadra, S.K., Ahmad, H., Yoo, S., Kalita, M.P., Boyland, A.J. and Sahu, J.K. (2010) Performance comparison of Zr-based and Bi-based erbium-doped fiber amplifiers. Optics Letters, 35 (17), 2882-2884. (doi:10.1364/OL.35.002882).

Abstract

In this Letter, we present a comprehensive comparison of the performance of a zirconia-based erbium-doped fiber amplifier (Zr-EDFA) and a bismuth-based erbium-doped fiber amplifier (Bi-EDFA). The experimental results reveal that a Zr-EDFA can achieve comparable performance to the conventional Bi-EDFA for C-band and L-band operations. With a combination of both Zr and Al, we could achieve a high erbium-doping concentration of about 2800 ppm (parts per million) in the glass host without any phase separations of rare earths. The Zr-based erbium-doped fiber (Zr-EDF) was fabricated using in a ternary glass host, zirconia-yttria-aluminum codoped silica fiber through a solution-doping technique along with modified chemical vapor deposition. At a high input signal of 0 dBm, a flat gain at average value of 13 dB is obtained with a gain variation of less than 2 dB within the wavelength region of 1530-1575 nm and using 2 m of Zr-EDF and 120 mW pump power. The noise figures are less than 9.2 at this wavelength region. It was found that a Zr-EDFA can achieve even better flat-gain value and bandwidth as well as lower noise figure than the conventional Bi-EDFA.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: J.K. Sahu

Download statistics