Abstract
We propose and numerically investigate annular-cladding erbium doped multicore fibers (AC-EDMCF) with either solid or air hole inner cladding to enhance the pump power efficiency in optical amplifiers for spatial division multiplexing (SDM) transmission links. We first propose an all-glass fiber in which a central inner cladding region with a depressed refractive index is introduced to confine the pump inside a ring-shaped region overlapping the multiple signal cores. Through numerical simulations, we determine signal core and annular pump cladding parameters respecting fabrication constraints. We also propose and examine a multi-spot injection scheme for launching the pump in the annular cladding. With this all-glass fiber with annular cladding, our results predict 10 dB increase in gain and 21% pump power savings compared to the standard double cladding design. We also investigate a fiber with an air hole inner cladding to further enhance the pump power confinement and minimize power leaking into the inner cladding. The results are compared to the all-glass AC-EDMCF.
Highlights
The phenomenal rise of data traffic, recently driven by the increasing use of video streaming, social media and cloud computing, is expected to saturate the capacity limit of single-mode fibers (SMFs) within a decade or so [1]
In-core pumping of an erbium doped multicore fiber amplifiers (ED-MCF) avoids the drawbacks of using multiple EDFAs in parallel, but still requires several single-mode pump lasers as well as spatial channel demultiplexers/multiplexers at the amplifier input
We propose a double-cladding erbium doped 6-core fiber based on an annular-cladding (ACEDMCF) for guiding the pump field
Summary
The phenomenal rise of data traffic, recently driven by the increasing use of video streaming, social media and cloud computing, is expected to saturate the capacity limit of single-mode fibers (SMFs) within a decade or so [1]. As with current SMF based transmission links, practical SDM links will eventually require relayed amplification between spans. Both in-core [5] and cladding [6], [7] pumped erbium doped multicore fiber amplifiers (ED-MCF) have been reported recently. In-core pumping of an ED-MCF avoids the drawbacks of using multiple EDFAs in parallel, but still requires several single-mode pump lasers as well as spatial channel demultiplexers/multiplexers at the amplifier input. In order to reduce pump complexity and related costs, cladding pumping is actively studied towards efficient multicore amplification. The latter scheme allows the use of a low-cost and high-power multimode laser to pump all cores simultaneously. We investigate the performance of the AC-EDMCF through numerical calculations of the signal gain and noise figure (NF)
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