Optical Fiber Amplifier Employing a Bundle of Reduced Cladding Erbium-Doped Fibers

We propose a novel optical amplifier that employs a bundle of reduced cladding erbium-doped fibers (EDFs) for multicore fiber transmission and successfully demonstrate the amplification of seven independent signals by employing a bundle of 60-μm cladding EDFs and a planar lightwave circuit integration technique. Average gains of 23 dB with low noise figures of less than 5.1 dB in the C-band were achieved for seven individual EDFs. We also confirmed that low crosstalk characteristics can be achieved for a multicore optical fiber amplifier by using bundled EDF.