Hybrid Pumping for Optimized Electrical Power Usage in Cladding-Pumped L-Band Amplifiers

We investigate reducing pump power requirements in super L-band erbium/ytterbium co-doped fiber amplifiers. We examine several pump configurations and find good trade-offs in performance and power when employing a hybrid pumping scheme that combines forward 915 nm cladding-pumping with backward 1480 nm core-pumping. Using experimental measurements with hybrid pumping, we train a neural network model to predict gain and noise figure. With the fast and precise neural network model, we examine the effect on performance (gain, noise figure and total electrical power consumption) as we vary the percentage of power dedicated to cladding vs. core pumping.