Lossless wide-band reflective star coupler using erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

A wide-band 64-port amplified reflective star coupler (ARSC) using eight fiber amplifiers and only four pump laser diodes is demonstrated. The loss of this ARSC can be fully compensated from 1530 mn to 1565 nm due to its double-pass amplification process. The power margin increment of 21.7 dB with the power penalty of 1.3 dB and the cross-channel power penalty of 2 dB are achieved in a 1.7 Gb/s system experiment. This ARSC technology makes the star coupler cost-effective to be used in many larger wavelength division multiple access networks.<
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