Wideband EDFA utilizing short-length high concentration erbium-doped fiber

In this paper, we experimentally investigate the performance of an efficient high gain wideband erbium-doped fiber amplifier that operates in conventional and long wavelength communication windows utilizing short-length high-concentration erbium doped fiber (EDF). The performance of the amplifier is characterized and optimized for different performance param-eters such as gain and noise figure for different input signal power, signal wavelength and pump power. An optical filter and C/L coupler are used to reduce the self-saturation effect and suppress the C-band amplified spontaneous emission noise. The amplifier achieves a signal gain of 52 dB with a low noise figure of 3.8 dB at −50 dBm input signal power using a single pump source with only 8 m of EDF length. An acceptable gain flatness of for the L-band signals, ranging from 1570 nm to 1610 nm is achieved.