Bandwidth-expandable erbium-doped fiber amplets

A narrow-band optical amplifier ("amplet") is proposed and demonstrated that can be constructed into an amplifier-based subsystem to perform nonlinear dispersion compensation and to flatten gain while the input level changes in a dense wavelength-division-multiplexed (DWDM) optical networking system. The amplet is designed to inherently provide two networking features: narrow-band accessibility and bandwidth scalability. For a 100-GHz-spaced DWDM application, each amplet can process four channels. The crosstalk between amplets is better than 58 dB. The capability to flatten gain and improve the transient response is experimentally demonstrated when an amplet array subsystem is formed.