Performances of Erbium‐Doped Fiber Amplifier Using 1530nm‐Band Pump for Long Wavelength Multichannel Amplification

The performance of a long wavelength‐band erbium‐doped fiber amplifier (L‐band EDFA) using 1530nm‐band pumping has been studied. A 1530nm‐band pump source is built using a tunable light source and two C‐band EDFAs in cascaded configuration, which is able to deliver a maximum output power of 23dBm. Gain coefficient and noise figure (NF) of the L‐band EDFA are measured for pump wavelengths between 1530nm and 1560nm. The gain coefficient with a 1545nm pump is more than twice as large as with a 1480nm pump. It indicates that the L‐band EDFA consumes low power. The noise figure of 1530nm pump is 6.36dB at worst, which is 0.75dB higher than that of 1480nm pumped EDFA. The optimum pump wavelength range to obtain high gain and low NF in the 1530nm band appears to be between 1530nm and 1540nm. Gain spectra as a function of a pump wavelength have bandwidth of more than 10nm so that a broadband pump source can be used as 1530nm‐band pump. The L‐band EDFA is also tested for WDM signals. Flat Gain bandwidth is 32nm from 1571.5 to 1603.5nm within 1dB excursion at input signal of –10dBm/ch. These results demonstrate that 1530nm‐band pump can be used as a new efficient pump source for L‐band EDFAs.