New Burst-Mode Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier with Wide Linearity and High Output Power for Uplink Analog Radio-over-Fiber Signal Transmission

We report the adaptability of the burst-mode erbium-doped fiber amplifier (BM-EDFA) for uplink transmission of sharply rising analog radio-over-fiber (RoF) signals by using long-term evolution (LTE) -Advanced format on a mobile front-haul. Recent drastically increased mobile data traffic is boosting the demand for high-speed radio communication technologies for next-generation mobile services to enhance user experience. However, the latency become increasingly visible as serious issues. Analog RoF technology is a promising candidate for a next generation mobile front-haul to realize low latency. For the uplink, an RoF signal may rise sharply in response to a burst of in-coming radio signals. We propose that a newly developed BM-EDFA is applied for such a sharply rising RoF signal transmission. The BM-EDFA that we designed using enhanced intrinsic saturation power EDF to suppress the gain transient caused by received optical power fluctuations with optical feedback. The new BM-EDFA was designed for a wider linear output power range and lower NF than the previous BM-EDFA. The observed range of received optical power satisfying an error vector magnitude of less than 8%rms achieved over 16dB. We consider that our BM-EDFAs with wide linear ranges of output power will be a key device for the LTE-Advanced RoF uplink signal transmission via optical access networks for the next-generation mobile front-haul.