Low-cost technique for gain and noise figure measurement of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers using a broadband source and filter tuning

Sanjay Gupta; Li Qian

doi:10.1117/12.566974

20 December 2004 Low-cost technique for gain and noise figure measurement of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers using a broadband source and filter tuning

Sanjay Gupta, Li Qian

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 5577, Photonics North 2004: Optical Components and Devices; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.566974
Event: Photonics North, 2004, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

We report a unique low-cost technique for broadband gain and noise figure characterization of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers using an amplified-spontaneous-emission (ASE) source and a tunable filter with multiple steep slopes. The filter edge is tuned in steps of 10 pm and a series of output versus input power spectral density data points are taken at a fixed wavelength. Gain and noise figure of the amplifier are obtained by extracting the slope and intercept of output versus input power spectral density. The results obtained over a 20 dB total input power range are in good agreement (within ± 0.2 dB) with those obtained using conventional spectral-interpolation technique employing multiple DFB lasers at 100 GHz spacing over the C-band. The required filter depth is about 35 dB. Our method has several major advantages: (1) Low cost, as there is no need for multiple DFB laser sources or high-speed AOM modulators and RF drivers; (2) Immune to steady-state noise in the source; (3) Can be used to characterize amplifiers with fast dynamics as its accuracy is in principle not affected by the response time of the amplifying medium.

Citation Download Citation

Sanjay Gupta and Li Qian "Low-cost technique for gain and noise figure measurement of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers using a broadband source and filter tuning", Proc. SPIE 5577, Photonics North 2004: Optical Components and Devices, (20 December 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.566974

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