Gain-clamping in L-band zirconium-erbium co-doped fiber amplifier with FBG based lasing control

• Main Authors: Sadik, Serif Ali, Durak, Firat Ertac, Pau, Mukul Chandra, Zulkipli, Nur Farhanah, Altuncu, Ahmet, Harun, Sulaiman Wadi
• Format: Article
• Published: John Wiley & Sons 2022
• Subjects: QC Physics; TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/33735/

In this study, gain clamping performance in an L-band zirconium-erbium co-doped fiber amplifier (Zr-EDFA) with a very short length of heavily doped fiber and FBG based lasing control structure was presented. A simple gain clamping design based on a symmetrical narrow band C-band fiber Bragg grating (FBG) pair addition was used in the L-band Zr-EDFA with bidirectionally pumping scheme. An L-band gain of higher than 25 dB was obtained with a maximum noise figure (NF) of 5 dB in the conventional Zr-EDFA design which was higher than the previous results obtained with forward pumping scheme. When a couple of narrow band FBGs at Bragg reflection wavelength of 1542 nm are used as the lasing mechanism for gain clamping in L-band operation, small signal gain of Zr-EDFA decreases, but on the other hand, the gain is clamped at almost 15.5 dB with a flattened gain spectrum along a dynamic range of 25 dB for the signal input powers between -30 and -5 dBm with the expense of 1.5 dB NF penalty.