Optical Fiber Technology 52 (2019) 101971

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Optical Fiber Technology

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SOA/EDFA/RAMAN optical amplifier for DWDM systems at the edge of L & T

U wavelength bands
⁎
Ajaybeer kaura, , Manjit Singh Bhamraha, Ahmad Atiehb
a
Dept. of Electronics and Communication Eng., Punjabi University, Patiala, India
b
Optiwave Systems Inc, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper presents an enhanced hybrid SOA/EDFA/RAMAN optical amplifier design for Dense Wavelength
DWDM system Division Multiplexed (DWDM) Systems at the edge of L & U wavelength bands. A semiconductor optical am-
EDFA plifier is used as a booster in conjunction with the other two kinds of optical amplifiers (EDFA and RAMAN) to
SOA achieve better amplification performance. Forty DWDM channels at 10 Gbps in the frequency range
RAMAN
185–185.975 THz spaced by 25 GHz are transmitted over 200 km of standard telecommunication fibre. The
Hybrid optical amplifiers
Edge of U-band transmission
hybrid amplifier performance is characterized in terms of maximum gain achieved, gain flatness and amplifier
noise figure (NF). A comparison between forward pumping and backward pumping of the RAMAN amplifier is
considered for different lengths of the RAMAN fibre. The maximum achieved gain of the hybrid optical amplifier
is over 30 dB with 1 dB gain flatness using 30 km of fibre for the RAMAN amplifier with total forward pumping
power of 1650 mW and total backward pumping power of 730 mW. However, the hybrid amplifier has a gain of
26 dB and gain flatness better than 0.8 dB when using 25 km of fibre for the RAMAN amplifier with combined
total forward pumping power of 1270 mW and total backward pumping power of 850 mW. The amplifier noise
figure obtained is less than 5.7 dB for all DWDM channels.

1. Introduction
The deployment of hybrid optical amplifier (HOA) in Dense
Wavelength Division Multiplexed (DWDM) systems enables long-haul
optical transmission [1]. Achieving high signal gain with flat gain
profile is desired for this application. That can be obtained using hybrid
Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier (EDFA) and RAMAN optical amplifier
[2]. Tailoring the gain profile of the EDFA/RAMAN hybrid combination
with that of a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) enables
achieving very high signal gain with flat response at the edge of L and U
wavelength bands.
Typically, EDFAs are used in the C and L wavelength bands.
However, gain flattening filters are used to flatten the gain profile of
transmitted optical DWDM signal [3]. RAMAN amplifiers have been
used with EDFAs as they provide lower noise figure and wider ampli-
fication range. The gain spectrum of a RAMAN amplifier depends on the
pump(s) power, pump wavelength(s) and the direction of pumping
(forward, backward or combination) [4]. In order to obtain flat gain
profile for a wide wavelength region, the pump wavelength and pump
power must be chosen carefully. On the other hand, semiconductor
optical amplifiers can be used in different wavelength bands [5].
Although, SOAs offer wideband amplification range, they suffer from
large wavelength dependent gain and high noise figure. As a result, they
can only be used to amplify limited number of DWDM channels. Al-
ternately, gain flattening filters must be used to flatten the SOA gain
spectrum.
There are different hybrid optical amplifier configurations in-
troduced in the literature. Matheus et al. (2011) proposed an EDFA/
RAMAN amplifier over C + L band and achieved DWDM signal gain of
17 dB with ripple about 2 dB over 65 nm bandwidth, which was
transmitted for a distance up-to 180 km [6]. M. H. Ali et al. (2013)
investigated two types of hybrid optical amplifiers depending upon the
position of EDFA amplifier. They achieved a gain of 23 dB with gain
variation of 3 dB for one type and gain of 17 dB with gain variation less
than 4.4 dB for the other type [7]. Peiris et al. (2014) described a model
consists of few RAMAN- amplifiers in tandem configuration. In this
design, the gain obtained is about 20 dB with approximately 4 dB gain
ripple [8]. Shien-Kuei Liaw et al. (2014) introduced two schemes of
hybrid optical amplifiers using the concept of pump reuse and pump
sharing. They achieved an average gain and noise figure of 20 dB and
6.5 dB, respectively [9]. Simranjit Singh et al. (2014) achieved a gain of
14 dB with gain variation of 0.75 dB for a hybrid configuration with an

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ajaybeer.kaur@gmail.com (A. kaur).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yofte.2019.101971
Received 14 March 2019; Received in revised form 26 June 2019; Accepted 28 June 2019
1068-5200/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A. kaur, et al.
Er-Yb co-doped waveguide amplifier (EYDWA) and an SOA used to
transmit 100 DWDM channels at 0.2 nm interval [10]. It is observed
that when SOA is used as a booster, the hybrid amplifier gain profile
variation is reduced from 2 dB to approximately 1.1 dB. Simranjit Singh
et al. (2014) proposed a multistage gain-flattened EDFA/RAMAN hy-
brid amplifiers utilizing gain equalization technique. A gain variation of
3 dB and noise figure about 7.4 dB are achieved [11]. Kirandeep kaur
et al. (2015) achieved gain of 25 dB along with transmission distance up
to 200 km using an SOA as booster for hybrid EDFA/RAMAN amplifier
for wavelength region 1531–1570 nm [12]. Hafiz Muhammad Obaid
et al. (2018) proposed Er–Yb co-doped waveguide/RAMAN hybrid
optical amplifier using hybrid genetic algorithm. They reported a flat
gain about 25 dB with gain ripple of 2.78 dB over wavelength range
1539.7–1562.7 nm range at 0.2 nm channel spacing and the noise
figure less than 6 dB [13].
Thus, different hybrid optical amplifiers are investigated as dis-
cussed above. An optimized hybrid SOA/EDFA/RAMAN amplifier is
proposed in this work. The RAMAN amplifier is pumped in both di-
rections using four pumps in each direction with different power and
wavelengths. Although, the cost of the proposed hybrid optical ampli-
fier is high due to using eight pumps. However, this kind of hybrid
amplifier is needed to allow such 40 DWDM transmission over than
200 km. Single type of amplifiers will not be able to support such
transmission distances at the edge of L and U bands. Also, the proper
design of the hybrid amplifier allows achieving excellent flat gain
characteristics for 40 DWDM channels with very high gain. No gain
flattening filters are used in this design.
In this paper, a DWDM signal modulated at 10 Gbps data rate at the
edge of L and U wavelength bands spaced by 25 GHz is transmitted over
200 km using the hybrid optical amplifier. The hybrid optical amplifier
provided over 30 dB gain. The proposed hybrid optical amplifier can
offer gain for wavelengths band beyond the L-band. Tailoring the gain
profile of each of the amplifiers enables achieving about 1 dB gain
profile flatness in the operating wavelengths band. This achieved gain
and flatness of a hybrid optical amplifier is reported at the edge of L and
U wavelength band.
The paper is organized as follows. The hybrid optical amplifier
model is described in Section 2. Results and discussion are described in
Section 3. Finally, the conclusions are listed at the end of the paper.
2. Hybrid optical amplifier model
Forty DWDM channels in the frequency range from 185–186 THz
(1612–1620 nm) having 25 GHz channel spacing are modulated using
10 Gbps NRZ data format. The channel spacing 25 GHz is chosen to
show the possibility of transmitting condensed DWDM channels over
very long distances. Typically, closely spaced DWDM channels suffer
from FWM and RAMAN gain tilt in addition to SPM and XPM. The
proposed designed considered all these nonlinear effects and showed
the possibility of transmitting 40 DWDM channels with 25 GHz spacing
at the edge of L and U wavelength bands.
Fig. 1 illustrates the block diagram of the investigated optical
transmission system using the proposed hybrid optical amplifier (HOA)
configuration. Optiwave OptiSystem simulation tool is used to in-
vestigate the performance of the different configurations of the HOA. It
is also used in the optimization process for the RAMAN amplifier pumps
power level and wavelength.
The power of each DWDM channel is set to 1 mW. The multiplexer
combines the different channels and an SOA is used to amplify the
DWDM signal, which is transmitted over a 100 km of standard tele-
communication optical fibre (SMF-28). The attenuation of the fibre is
assumed 0.2 dB/km. A dispersion compensation fibre (DCF) is used to
compensate the dispersion of SMF-28. A hybrid EDFA/RAMAN ampli-
fier allows transmission of the DWDM signal over another 100 km link.
The DWDM system parameters are summarized in Table 1.
The hybrid optical amplifier is constructed using an EDFA and
2
Optical Fiber Technology 52 (2019) 101971
multi-pumped RAMAN amplifier [14]. The EDFA consists of 15 m er-
bium doped fibre that is pumped using a 1465 nm laser diode with
pump power of 100 mW. The length of EDFA amplifier for experimental
set up varies from typically 10–30 m [15] and in this model length is
chosen within this limit. The parameters of the booster SOA amplifier
are shown in Table 2. The RAMAN amplifier is pumped from both di-
rections using different pumping powers and wavelengths. Different
fibre lengths cases of 15, 20, 25 and 30 km are investigated in this work
for the RAMAN amplifier. The forward pumping powers of multi-pump
RAMAN amplifier are 123, 140, 210, 250 mW at wavelengths of 1500,
1525, 1565, 1574 nm with total forward pump power of 723 mW as
described in Table 3. Some commercially available RAMAN amplifiers
use pump power of 550 mW (two pumps) and 850 mW (three pumps)
[16]. In this work, four pumps i.e. forward/backward pumps are used
to achieve maximum gain and gain flatness. The different combination
of pump wavelengths is optimized in another paper by the authors.
The following procedures described in the algorithm shown in Fig. 2
are used to investigate the performance of the hybrid optical amplifier.
The HOA gain and gain flatness parameters are considered in the
analysis. They are calculated depending upon the forward pumping
power and backward pumping power levels. The gain flatness is the
variation of HOA gain over transmitted signal wavelength range.
3. Results and discussion
The investigation of the hybrid optical amplifier gain and gain
flatness performance is conducted for two scenarios:
(i) Varying the backward pumping power levels while keeping the total
forward pumping power fixed at 723 mW
Initially, the total forward pumping power is fixed at 723 mW for all
lasers described in Table 3. Typically, a RAMAN amplifier uses multiple
pump lasers to control and realize the desired gain and flatness. Ad-
justing the ratio of these pump powers at different wavelength enables
the RAMAN amplifier to achieve that desired gain and flatness. The
distribution of power of each pump at specific wavelength is optimized
by authors in another work. The total backward pumping power levels
are varied for the four pumps as shown in Table 4. The gain and gain
flatness parameters of the HOA are plotted in Fig. 3 for different con-
figurations of pump wavelengths and pump powers cases.
Four different fibre lengths 15, 20, 25 and 30 km of RAMAN am-
plifier are investigated in this work to find the maximum possible
achieved gain and gain flatness as shown in Fig. 3. It is observed from
the figure that the HOA minimum achieved gain is 13 dB with flatness
1 dB for total backward pump power of 450 mW and 15 km RAMAN
fibre length. While, the maximum achieved gain of 37 dB with gain
flatness of 4 dB is obtained for total backward pump power of 1630 mW
and 30 km RAMAN fibre length. However, a gain of 17 dB and gain
flatness of 1 dB is achieved for the total backward pump power of
730 mW and RAMAN fibre length of 25 km as shown in the figure. Also,
a gain of 18 dB and flatness of 1 dB with total backward pump power of
850 mW for a RAMAN fibre length of 25 km is achieved as shown in the
same figure. This gain is called GBest and its backward pump conditions
are further used to optimize the HOA gain and gain flatness under
different total forward pumping conditions.
(ii) Fixing total backward pumping power to either 730 mW or
850 mW, while varying the total forward pumping power levels
For further exploration of the operating conditions of the HOA to
achieve maximum gain with minimum gain flatness, two scenarios of
total backward pumping power of 730 mW and 850 mW are selected
with different total forward pumping power levels combination as listed
in Table 4.
In this investigation, there is need to vary one parameter at each
A. kaur, et al. Optical Fiber Technology 52 (2019) 101971

Fig. 1. Block diagram of DWDM system transmission system using hybrid optical amplifier.

Table 1
DWDM transmission system parameters.
S. No. WDM characteristics Values

1. No. of Channels 40
2. Channel Spacing (GHz) 25
3. Signal channel Start frequency (THz) 185
4. Signal Channel end frequency (THz) 185.975
5. Laser source power (dBm) 0
6. Link Range (km) 200

Table 2
SOA parameters.
S. No. Parameters Value

1. Amplifier Length (μm) 400

2. Active Layer Width (μm) 2.0
3. Confinement Factor 0.31
4. Injection Current (A) 0.05

Table 3
Raman amplifier parameters.
S. No. Parameters Value

1. Fibre Length (km) 15, 20, 25, 30

2. Attenuation (dB/km) 0.2
3. Operating Temperature (K) 300
4. Forward Pump Wavelength 1500, 1525, 1565, 1574
(nm)
5. Forward Pumps Power (mW) 123, 140, 210, 250 i.e. total power of
723 mW

time. That is why we first fixed the total forward pumping power to Fig. 2. Algorithm for investigation the hybrid amplifier performance.
723 mW and find the optimal total backward pumping power which
was either 730 mW or 850 mW. Then we used either the total backward
In the first scenario of HOA gain and gain flatness investigation, the
pumping power (730 mW or 850 mW) to find the optimal total forward
backward pumping power levels of four pumps are fixed and set to 220,
pumping power for each case.
310, 100 and 100 mW for a total level of 730 mW. The simulations of
the overall system are carried out further for different total forward
(a) 730 mW backward pumping power case
pump powers configurations listed in Table 5. The used forward pumps
wavelengths are 1500, 1525, 1565, and 1574 nm.

3
A. kaur, et al. Optical Fiber Technology 52 (2019) 101971

Table 4
Various cases of total backward pumping power levels at different wavelengths for RAMAN amplifier, while forward pumping power is fixed at 723 mW. (Here *
indicates cases of best flatness of 1 dB, and ” indicates the repeated value of pump power).
Case No. Backward Pump Power (mW) at wavelength Total backward pump power (mw)
P1 + P2 + P3 + P4
P1@ λ1 = 1435 nm P2@ λ2 = 1460 nm P3@ λ3 = 1474 nm P4@ λ4 = 1489 nm

1. 120 130 100 100 450

2. 150 ” 120 ” 500
3. 100 ” 150 200 580
4. 220 310 100 100 730*
5. ” ” 200 120 850*
6. ” ” 250 200 980
7. ” ” 300 250 1080
8. ” ” 320 270 1120
9. ” ” 350 400 1280
10. 270 ” ” ” 1330
11. ” ” 420 450 1450
12. ” ” 470 500 1550
13. 220 ” 500 600 1630

40 10 35 4
15 km 20km 25 km 30 km
9 15 km 20km 25 km 30 km
35 15 km 20 km 25 km 30 km
30 3.5
8 15 km 20 km 25 km 30 km
30
7 3
GainFlatness (dB)

25
25
6
Gain (dB)

2.5

Gain Flatness (dB)

20 5 20
Gain (dB)

4 GBest 2
15
GBest
3 15
10 1.5
2
5 10
1 1
0 0
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 5 0.5
Total backward pump power (mW)

Fig. 3. Achieved HOA gain and gain flatness for different cases of total back- 0 0
ward pump powers using different length of RAMAN fibre (GBest denotes the 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800
Best Gain achieved with minimum gain flatness). Total Forward Pump Power (mW)

Fig. 4 illustrates the achieved gain and gain flatness for the different
configurations of forward pumping powers when using different fibre
lengths of 15, 20, 25 and 30 km for RAMAN amplifier when the total
backward pumping power is fixed to 730 mW. The HOA minimum
Fig. 4. Achieved HOA gain and gain flatness for different cases of total orward
pumping power levels using different RAMAN fibre lengths and 730 mW total
backward pumping power.

Table 5
Total Forward pumping power levels cases investigated with fixed total backward pumping power levels of 730 mW and 850 mW. (Here * indicates minimum gain
condition, ** indicates maximum gain condition, *** indicates best gain and gain flatness combination condition for 730 mW case and ” indicates the repeated value
of pump power).
Cases No. Forword Pumps Power (mW) at wavelengths Total Forward Pump Power (mW)

P1@ λ1 = 1500 nm P2@ λ2 = 1525 nm P3@ λ3 = 1565 nm P4@ λ4 = 1574 nm

1. 100 110 120 120 450*

2. ” 130 150 170 550
3. 130 150 170 200 650
4. 123 140 210 250 723
5. 140 170 ” ” 770
6. 170 200 ” ” 830
7. 200 210 220 230 860
8. 220 ” 250 300 980
9. 230 250 300 320 1100
10. 250 300 350 370 1270***
11. ” 320 ” 400 1320
12. 320 350 400 450 1520
13. 350 370 430 500 1650**
14. ” ” 500 530 1750

4
A. kaur, et al. Optical Fiber Technology 52 (2019) 101971

35 10
15 km 20 km 25 km 30 km
9
30
15 km 20 km 25 km 30 km 8
25 7

Gain Flatness (dB)

Gain (dB) 6
20
GBest 5
15
4

10 3
2
5
1
0 0
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800
Total Forward Pump Power (mW)
Fig. 5. Achieved HOA gain and flatness for different cases of total forward pump power levels using different RAMAN fibre lengths for fixed 850 mW total backward
pump power.

achieved gain is 13 dB with 1 dB Gain flatness for total forward pump

power of 450 mW for RAMAN fibre length of 15 km and the maximum
gain obtained is 30 dB with 1 dB Gain flatness for the total forward
pump power of 1650 mW and RAMAN fibre length of 30 km as shown
in Fig. 4. The minimum gain flatness of 0.8 dB and gain 24 dB is
achieved for a total forward pump power of 1270 mW for 25 km
RAMAN fibre length of HOA. The gain obtained in our setup is close to
data sheet of hybrid optical amplifier (RAMAN/EDFA) [17]. The
parameters and specifications considered in the setup are close to
practical parameters defined in the commercial data sheets of the de-
vices [15–17]. So, there cannot be any problem in translation this
model in practical scenario.
Thus, this HOA can support optical DWDM signal transmission at
the edge of L and U bands with a high gain and flatness that allows
transmission over than 200 km of SMF fibre.

(b) 850 mW total backward pumping power case
Similarly, in the second scenario the gain and gain flatness are in-
vestigated for fixed total backward pump power of 850 mW for dif-
ferent forward pumping power cases shown in Table 5. Fig. 5 shows
that the HOA has minimum gain of 14 dB and gain flatness of 1 dB is
achieved for 15 km RAMAN fibre length using total forward pump
power of 450 mW. While, the maximum gain achieved is 32 dB with
2 dB gain flatness for 30 km RAMAN fibre length using total forward
pump power of 1650 mW. It is also clear that the best HOA gain of
26 dB with 0.8 dB gain flatness is obtained for 25 km RAMAN fibre
length using total backward pump power of 850 mW and total forward
pump power of 1270 mW.
The HOA gain versus DWDM channels frequency is shown in Fig. 6
for different RAMAN fibre lengths for total forward pump power of
1270 mW and total backward pump power of 850 mW. It is clear from
the figure that the HOA gain with RAMAN fibre length of 25 km has
smaller variations compared to the gain obtained for RAMAN fibre
lengths of 15, 20 and 30 km. Further, the performance of the system
degrades if the length of the RAMAN fibre length is increased beyond
30 km i.e. the BER starts degrading. Also, if the pump power increased
further the gain of the HOA is increased but at the cost of more gain
variation over the wavelength range.
This proposed hybrid amplifier is working at the edge of the L and U
wavelength bands, which makes the design of very high gain amplifier
using only EDFA a challenge. There is possibility to achieve 35 dB gain
with single EDFA or SOA in the C-band or in the L-band up to 1610 nm
Fig. 6. Achieved HOA Gain versus DWDM channels frequency for different
RAMAN fibre lengths using total forward pumping power of 1270 mW and total
backward pumping power of 850 mW.
range but it is not possible to have flat gain characteristics. In addition
to that, the proposed hybrid optical amplifier allows transmission of
DWDM signal over 200 km at that edge of wavelengths, which can’t be
achieved with single EDFA or SOA. There is a need to use many am-
plifiers in the link that will affect the overall OSNR and requires gain
flattening, which will limit the maximum possible reach. We believe
that creating this hybrid optical amplifiers combination enabled the
transmission of DWDM signal at the edge of L and U bands for a dis-
tance that is over than 200 km. Single type of optical amplifiers will not
be able to support such transmission distance at that wavelength range.
(iii) DWDM system transmission overall performance
The overall hybrid SOA/EDFA/RAMAN amplifier noise figure
versus DWDM channels frequency is plotted for the RAMAN amplifier
pumping conditions that produces best gain and gain flatness perfor-
mance. Fig. 7 illustrates the noise figure (NF) obtained for each DWDM
channel for total backward pumping power cases of 730 mW and
850 mW and a total forward pumping power of 1270 mW using RAMAN
fibre length of 25 km. The achieved NF of the DWDM optical trans-
mission system at edge of the L and U wavelength bands is on the
average 5.2 dB for most channels. The obtained noise figure for the
proposed hybrid optical amplifier is close to previously reported values

5
A. kaur, et al. Optical Fiber Technology 52 (2019) 101971

the effect of optimized HOA in the transmission system. The measured

Fig. 7. Achieved HOA noise figure for transmitted DWDM channels for different
total backward pumping power cases using 25 km of RAMAN fibre and
1270 mW total forward pumping power.
Fig. 8. BER versus DWDM channel frequency for different transmission cases.
in the literature for hybrid amplifiers [15,16].
There are different noise sources present in the overall transmission
system. Some of these noise sources are created physically in the optical
fibre (SPM, XPM, FWM, SBS, and RAMAN effects) and optical amplifiers
(NF, XGM, patterning effect, RAMAN gain tilt). Other noise sources may
appear due to operating conditions such as wavelength separation
(25 GHz), launch signal power and wavelength band (edge L and U
bands), which cause signal interference or distortion. All of these con-
ditions would affect the overall OSNR at the receiver. In the proposed
systems, all of these noise sources are manipulated and controlled to
enable over 200 km of optical signal transmission.
Finally, the bit error rate (BER) performance for each transmitted
DWDM channel over than 200 km of SMF-28 fibre (25 km with RAMAN
amplifier fibre) characterized for different condition is shown in Fig. 8.
The Back-to-Back (BB) case shows the performance without the trans-
mission fibre and amplifiers, which gives a baseline for characterizing
BB BER is approximately 10−7. This high BER is due to the use of
25 GHz channel spacing, noisy pin detector and low-pass filters with cut
off frequency of 0.8 of bit rate. Also, the 25 GHz channels spacing sets a
limit on the maximum possible channel bandwidth of the MUX and
DEMUX, which is 12.5 GHz. In the simulations, 10 GHz MUX and
DEMUX channel bandwidth is used, which also caused high BER values
as shown in the Back-to-back transmission case. The BER performance
when using either EDFA only or SOA only with no fibre is about 10−6.
However, the BER performance when using the hybrid HOA in the full
transmission system, which is over 200 km of SMF-28 is about 10−3.
The achieved BER is sufficient, as forward error correcting codes may
be used to translate the produced BER to acceptable limit. As it is dis-
cussed in [18], BER of 10−3 without using FEC codes can be improved
to BER of 10−14 with FEC codes. Accordingly, BER of 10−3 can be
improved for the hybrid optical amplifier transmission system (as
shown in Fig. 6 of reference [18]). On the other hand, UFEC can be used
to systems with BER of 1E-2. Thus, the case with achieved minimum
gain of about 26 dB and gain flatness of 0.8 dB for the HOA over the 40
DWDM channels in the range of 1612–1620 nm can enable proper
transmission of the optical signal over than 200 km of fibre.
The analysis has been repeated for different wavelength ranges as
shown in Table 6 using total forward pumping power of 1270 mW and
total backward pumping power of 850 mW. A 94 DWDM channels in
the wavelength range 1600–1620 nm can be transmitted over 200 km of
fibre. The achieved minimum gain of HOA is 23 dB with gain flatness of
4 dB. On the other hand, the HOA performance results in the wave-
length range 1590–1620 nm when 144 channels transmitted are gain of
24 dB with gain ripple 3 dB. However, for the wavelength range
1580–1620 nm and 1570–1620 nm the minimum gain achieved of HOA
is 24 dB with gain flatness of 3 dB and 6 dB, respectively. The BER
performance for the different wavelength spans is also summarized in
Table 6 for three selected channels in the span; the first, middle and last
channels.
Table 7 provides a comparison of different published HOA schemes
with our proposed HOA model. As shown in the table, a gain of about
12 dB with flatness of ~1.2 dB had been achieved for L-band RAMAN/
EDFA having 35 channels with 1 nm channel spacing [12]. The
RAMAN/EDFA model investigated in [8] have gain of 24 dB with flat-
ness ~1.15 dB amplifies 100 channels at 0.2 nm channel spacing. Si-
milarly, the other model HOA/DRA/EDFA as reported in [9] consists of
40 channels at 0.2 nm spacing. The gain achieved for the hybrid am-
plifier was 25 dB with 3 dB flatness. As referred to the model HOA/
DRA/EDFA having 100 channels with 0.2 nm channel spacing, the gain
obtained was 25 dB with no data on gain flatness [10]. Also, the model
EYDWA/RAMAN had been investigated for 116 channels at 0.2 nm
channel spacing provided gain of about 25 dB with 2.78 flatness [12].
This investigation reveals that our proposed hybrid model provides
the best gain (26 dB) with minimum flatness (0.8 dB) and NF (< 5.7 dB)
for wavelength range of 1612–1620 nm for RAMAN fibre length of
25 km having total forward pump power of 1270 mW and total back-
ward pump power of 850 mW. Although the RAMAN fibre length could
be further increased, we have optimized the RAMAN fibre length to get

Table 6
Performance comparison of different DWDM transmission systems with channel spacing of 25 GHz, (Here Ch. denotes the no. of channels, Gmin denotes the minimum
gain, GF denotes the gain flatness and ” indicates the repeated value just above the quotes).
S. No. Wavelength (nm) No. of Chs. Gmin (dB) GF (dB) BER of channels

First channel Middle channel Last channel

1. 1612–1620 40 25.2 0.8 3.2e-03 4.5e-03 8.1e-03

2. 1600–1620 94 23 4 1.1e-09 3.3e-06 4.2e-02
3. 1590–1620 144 24 3 2.8e-08 3.4e-03 1
4. 1580–1620 192 ” 3 9.9e-03 3.8e-02 ”
5. 1570–1620 241 ” 6 1 7.6e-02 ”

6
A. kaur, et al.
Table 7
Gain and gain flatness comparison for different hybrid amplifier configuration in the literature (* denotes the best and ** denotes the maximum in proposed HOA).
S. No. Parameters [14]
1. No. of Ch./Ch. Spacing (nm) 35/1
2. Gain (dB) > 12
3. Gain Flatness (dB) ∼1.2
better gain flatness and gain combination. As described in this work, the
proposed hybrid model shows better performance in terms of maximum
gain, gain flatness, and wavelength plan as it operates at the edge of L
and U bands.
4. Conclusion
Numerical investigations are conducted using commercial software
to optimize the design of a hybrid SOA/EDFA/RAMAN amplifier to
allow transmission of 40 DWDM channels spaced at 25 GHz at the edge
of L and U wavelength bands. Extremely high gain hybrid optical am-
plifier can be achieved using bidirectional pumping of the RAMAN
fibre. A maximum gain of 32 dB with gain variation of 2 dB is possible
to achieve using 30 km RAMAN fibre and combination of total back-
ward pumping power of 850 mW and total forward pumping power of
1650 mW. The best gain and flatness performance of HOA is achieved
when using total forward pumping power of 1270 mW and total
backward pumping power of 850 mW, which provided gain of 26 dB
with gain variation of 0.8 dB and noise figure less than 5.7 dB. The
proposed hybrid amplifier is necessary to enable such transmission,
which cannot be realized using single kind of optical amplifiers. This
hybrid amplifier highlights the need to use three types of optical am-
plifiers that work cohesively in the transmission system over very long
distances (i.e. 200 km) at the edge of L and U bands. The interplay of
the physical characteristics of each of these amplifiers enables such
optical communication system which cannot be designed using one
type of optical amplifiers. Acceptable BER performance is achieved for
the 10 Gbps modulated DWDM signal transmitted over 200 km of SMF-
26 fibre. The HOA model can also be used for C and L wavelength bands
with 25 GHz channel spacing.
Acknowledgement
The authors thanks, Department of Science and Technology, Govt.
of India, New Delhi for providing financial support through sanctioned
project SR/WOS-A/ET-96/2016 under Women Scientist Scheme – A.
References
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100/0.2 40/0.2 100/0.2 116/0.2 40/0.2
> 24 > 16 25 > 25 > 26*
32**
∼1.15 3 ——— 2.78 0.8*
2**
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