Erbium-doped fiber amplifier second-order distortion in analog links and electronic compensation

The authors study the second-order distortion when an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is used to amplify the analog optical AM cable TV (CATV) multiple carrier signal from a directly modulated distributed feedback (DFB) semiconductor laser. Experimentally, it was seen that this second order distortion depends critically on the gain of the EDFA fiber amplifier. The authors attribute this distortion to the interaction between the frequency chirping of the DFB laser and the variable gain with wavelength of the amplifier. The authors describe an electronic predistorter that compensates the nonlinearity produced by the DFB-laser-EDFA combination. As a result, the high power advantage of the EDFA can be fully realized in spite of the potential for second-order distortion in the system.<
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