The effect of pump laser wavelength at 980 nm band on the performance of EDFA

In this study, the performance of a forward pumped erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) which is suitable to be used as a preamplifer in fiber optical communication systems is analyzed experimentally regarding the dependece of its performance on exact pumping wavelength at 980 nm region. The gain and noise figure (NF) characteristics of an EDF preamplifier is obtained for the pump laser wavelengths of 974 nm and 976 nm having different absorption cross sections. It has been shown that the experimental gain and NF characteristics are consistent with the absorption spectrum of the erbium doped fiber used. Furthermore, we report 1-2 dB variation in gain and NF performance of EDFA in response to a nanometer change at pump wavelength. As a result, in designing a forward pumped EDFA with a high gain and a low NF performance, the exact wavelength of the pump laser used should be very closed to the peak absorption wavelength of EDF.