A review of recent system demonstrations incorporating 1.3-μm praseodymium-doped fluoride fiber amplifiers

This paper provides a review of recent system demonstrations incorporating 1.3-/spl mu/m praseodymium doped fluoride fiber amplifiers (PDFFA's), following a brief historical perspective on the amplifiers development, the analogue and digital systems experiments, which have been conducted to date incorporating these new amplifiers, are described. Beyond this review material recent systems experiments conducted at BT Labs are also described. These experiments investigate the application of high performance PDFFA's to both, analogue, FM-SCM transmission, and high-speed (5 and 10 Gb/s), digital transmission systems. The results of a recent 10-Gb/s field transmission experiment are also presented. This paper also provides a perspective on the potential significance of 1.3-amplifiers to both long-haul point-to-point transmission systems and to optical fiber access networks based on passive optical network structures.< >