A study of gain and noise figure performance of an L-band erbium doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) with 980 nm and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) pumps

L-band gain improvement through usage of secondary pumping sources in the form of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) was conducted. Gain improvement as high as 6 dB was achieved. However, pumping the system directly with ASE would inevitably incur a noise figure penalty; in this case as much as 1 dB. For a system utilising ASE to improve L-band amplification, pumping the system counter-directionally with ASE while a 980 or 1480 nm pump is used in a co-propagating manner would yield the best overall system performance.