Performance optimization of hybrid optical amplifier for dense wavelength division multiplexed system

Abstract

Today’s high capacity dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) systems required the flattened gain spectra with large gain bandwidth. This required properly broadening the gain bandwidth of the optical amplifiers with proper amplification of the signals. In order to achieve this, a competent flat gain hybrid optical amplifier is demonstrated that comprised of a erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and Raman amplifier with multi-wavelength backward pumping scheme. Attempts were done in order to design a (E-R) hybrid optical amplifier (HOA) for 16 channels, 20 Gbps DWDM systems at reduced channel spacing of 0.2 nm and also compared with conventional amplifiers. The performance of the system is evaluated on the behalf of different parameters viz. gain, noise figure, output power, Optical Signal to Noise Ratio (OSNR). Numerous parameters of EDFA and Raman amplifiers are optimize to find the gain spectrum of E-R HOA. It is found that E-R HOA provides better gain uniformity with noise figure less than 5 dB. It is also found that for wavelength range 1553.13–1556.15 nm, a uniform gain of 38.85 dB is achieved for input power of “0” dB with noise figure variation of 0.29 dB without using any gain flattering scheme. The output power and OSNR of all the channels is measured at 0 dBm input power and found maximum power and SNR at 1556.15 nm channel frequency is 26.44 dBm and 40.71 dB respectively.