A Study of Gain-flattened L-Band EDFA

by Tseng, Wen-Hung

ABSTRACT In this thesis, we investigate the amplification characteristics of gain-flattened L-band (1570-1600 nm) erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) by employing the 1480 nm bi-directional pumping configuration. L-Band EDFAs are attractive because the use of L-band and C-band (1530-1560 nm) EDFAs in parallel greatly expands the amplification wavelength region. We adjusted the length of erbium-doped fiber (EDF) to achieve the flat amplification characteristics in the 1573-1600 nm wavelength region without using gain equalizers. The L-band EDFA exhibited a signal gain of 23 dB with good uniformity (less than 1 dB) and a noise figure of 6.9 dB for a 1580 nm signal of 16-channel WDM system. We also used the simulation tools to investigate the characteristics of L-band EDFA with the same configuration. The simulation results quite agree with the experimental data.