Performances of erbium-doped fiber amplifier using 1530nm-band pump for long wavelength multichannel amplification

The performance of a long wavelength-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier (L-band EDFA) using 1530nm-band pumping has been studied, A 1530nm-band pump source is built using a tunable light source and two C-band EDFAs in cascaded configuration, which is able to deliver a maximum output power of 23dBm, Gain coefficient and noise figure (NF) of the L-band EDFA are measured for pump wavelengths between 1530nm and 1560nm, The gain coefficient with a 1545nm pump is more than twice as large as with a 1480nm pump. It indicates that the L-band EDFA consumes low power, The noise figure of 1530nm pump is 6.36dB at worst, which is 0.75dB higher than that of 1480mn pumped EDFA. The optimum pump wave-length range to obtain high gain and low NF in the 1530nm band appears to be between 1530nm and 1540nm. Gain spectra as a function of a pump wavelength have bandwidth of more than 10nm so that a broadband pump source can be used as 1530nm-band pump, The L-band EDFA is also tested for WDM signals, Flat Gain bandwidth is 32nm from 1571.5 to 1603.5nm within 1dB excursion at input signal of -10dBm/ch, These results demonstrate that 1530nm-band pump can be used as a new efficient pump source for L-band EDFAs.