Introduction to Erbium Doped Fiber

Amplifier (EDFA)
Arifiana Satya Nastiti (1101134488)
Nadia Aisyah Permata Putri (110113______)
Sheira Banu Nasution (110113_______)

Timeline
What is EDFA?
Why do we need EDFA?
Implementation of EDFA in Optical Fiber Network. (ini
bikin skema perancangan/blok diagramnya aja)
Several Parameters to be Considered when Designing
EDFA
Simple Calculations

Parameters of EDFA
The main parameters in designing EDFA is the optical fiber
materials, the characteristics of waveguide, Erbium concentration
profiles, length of fibers, pump sources (including power, wavelength
and configuration), and the use of active or passive components.
The example of active component is automatic gain control, while
passive components such as WDM coupler and isolator.
Optical fiber characteristics include length of fiber, diameter of fiber,
cutoff wavelength, etc. It all can be obtained by numerical modeling
to get EDFA good performance.

Parameters of EDFA contd

Beside of those parameters, the output is also depending
on several factors of the nonlinear amplifier. Several
nonlinear factors which affect the quality amplifiers are
Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE), chromatic
dispersion, Self Phase Modulation (SPM), Group Velocity
Distortion (GVD), Four Wave Mixing (FWM), Stimulated
Brillouin Scattering (SBS), and polarization.

Parameters of EDFA contd

Amplifier design depends on the application that will be used. The
selection of all parameters is a very important. General purpose of
amplifier design is to get high gain, high power output signal, low
noise figure, reliability, and flat gain spectrum.
High gain can be obtained by using longer Erbium Doped Fiber
(EDF) or with a high concentration of erbium, and can also be done
by using a higher pump power. But those solutions can result the
noise figure will be even higher. So we must pay attention to the
optimum value of each parameter to gain EDFA output
corresponding to the desired application.

Parameters of EDFA contd

To improve performance of in-line amplifier, the used
multiple serial EDFA designed will be really effective. It
aims to get high gain and low noise figure. As we know, the
longer transmission distance, the total gain of the amplifier
will be decreased. For that we need to put some amplifiers
along the transmission line to maintain the desired gain. It
is important to determine the number and spacing between
EDFA amplifiers installed along the transmission line.

Required length of Er-doped

Fiber
Gain coefficient per length g depends on population
inversion and cross section for stimulated emission

g s N 2 N1

Overall gain depends on g and length L

Ge

gL

Expressed in decibels:

G 10 log e gL

Example
N1=1.8x1017 cm-3s=7.0x10-25 cm2
-3
-1
N2=4.8x1017 cm-3g=2.1x10 cm
How long does the fiber need to be for G to be equal to 35
dB?
gL

g s N 2 N1

Ans: L=38.4 meters

G 10 log e

How to mitigate long doped fiber

length?
Use a material that can hold many more erbium ionsnamely, a
polymer.
If gain regions can be reduced to centimeters from tens of meters,
polymer loss becomes insignificant
Short amplifiers might be integratable
Pumping Choices for EDFAs:
a)
b)
c)
d)

Forward pumping generates less noise

Backward pumping generates higher gain
980 nm pumping generates both higher gain and less noise
1480 nm pumping generates higher saturated power and tolerates a broader
range of pump wavelengths

ASE Power and Spontaneous

Emission Coefficient

Power and Noise Outputs

Power out
P GPs G 1 n sponmt h f
where mt=number of
transverse modes,
f=optical filter
bandwidth, and
nspon=spontaneous emission
population inversion factor.

Amplified Spontaneous

Emission (ASE) noise. There

is always some output even
with no signal input due to
some excitation of ions in
the fiber spontaneous
noise.
N2
n spon
N 2 N1

Power and Noise Outputs

contd
ASE current
Mean square beat noise current
Signal to noise with the pre-amplifier

Optimum Number of
Amplifiers
Noise figure for a chain of k
amplifiers (ratio of S/N in to
that of output)

km n
h

Fk

spon

Ps

2 B kmt nspon

Can be rewritten
as
Fk ak bk 2 10 c / k

where
a 2mt n spon
b

2
mt2 n spon
h f

lD
c
10

2 Pmax

2 B

Ps Pmax 10 lD / 10k

Example

NB: SNR before

amplification is 1.25 dB