Theoretical and experimental study of multifunction C+L band hybrid fiber amplifiers.

Abstract: We proposed and demonstrated a 100km hybrid C+L band fiber amplifier in the bridge-type scheme. It is composed of a C-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and an L-band Raman fiber amplifier (RFA) using double-pass dispersion compensators in a loop-back scheme. Dispersion slope mismatch is compensated precisely for all C+L band channels by writing fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) at appropriate locations. Gain variation among multiple channels can be reduced to ±0.2dB. The pump efficiency is improved by recycling the residual pump power. The C/L band WDM coupler which at merged point rejects C band amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) using L band coupler and vice versa. Both the simulation results and experimental measurements are realized in this paper. The hybrid EDFA/RFA may find vast applications in WDM long-haul systems and optical networks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]