Gain saturation effects in high-speed, multichannel erbium-doped fiber amplifiers at lambda =1.53 mu m

Gain compression effects during multichannel signal amplification in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier at lambda =1.53 are investigated. A theory is presented that accurately models the observed amplified spontaneous emission spectra, signal gains, and saturation effects. Measurements of the gain dynamics show recovery times in the 1-ms range, indicating that the fiber amplifier is immune to interchannel interference over a wide range of bit-sequence rates. Simultaneous amplification of two signals modulated at 2 Gb/s shows low crosstalk penalty, attributable only to steady-state gain compression. This experiment demonstrates the potential of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers for application in wavelength-division-multiplexed communication systems.<
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