<title>Properties of Raman fiber amplifiers for optical fiber communication systems</title>

Abstract

In recent years, one of the most tremendous outcomes of photonics research has been the rapid and impressive development of Raman fiber amplifiers (RFA). RFA will play an increasing role in future optical fiber communication (OFC) systems. One can select the following two types of RFA: - distributed RFA (DRFA); - discrete, or lumped RFA (LRFA). DRFA are increasingly utilized in OFC during recent years. In DRFA a part of transmission fiber itself is used as an amplifier fiber. In LRFA, one usually uses special fibers (Raman fibers) with characteristics that enable LRFA to operate effectively. The numerical and analytical solutions of the coupled differential equations for the Raman amplification in optical fiber are investigated. The silica fibers as a part of link itself and a special tellurium Raman fiber have been considered. An approach for the performance evaluation of digital optically amplified fiber-optic communication links is demonstrated. A revised time domain models for OFC systems with Raman fiber amplifiers have been discussed. These models have been used to evaluate the end-to-end performance of typical links, and the calculated results are in good agreement with experimental ones. It is conceivable that a new development in optical communication systems will lead toward all-optical networks being brought about by employment of Raman fiber amplifiers.© (2004) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.