Abstract

Optical fiber amplifiers are dominating the loss compensation in fiber optic communications systems, especially the Erbium doped types for communication spectrum based on silica fibers. The gain of the EDFA can be maximized by using appropriate design parameters and appropriate value of the material properties. This paper describes the derivation of the equations that govern the pump power, input signal propagation, gain and optimum fiber length of the amplifier. By using these deduced expressions, new tools have been developed using C programming and MATLAB and then the performances of EDFA pumped with 980-nm signal have been analyzed. The analysis results that the gain of the amplifier increases with the length of the amplifier, and also with the pump signal power. At higher values of signal power the gain becomes saturated. The gain has a nonlinear relation with the amplifier length for a particular pump power. From the experiments, it has been found that for a particular length the saturation gain increases with the carrier density of the amplifier, but at longer length the gain is almost independent of the carrier density. It has also been found that the pump threshold power increases linearly with the length and carrier density of the amplifier. The tools developed in the analysis process could be used by researchers in future for further investigation of the performance of EDFA in various parameter sets or, for finding a parameter set for specific target performance of the EDFA.

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