Cladding-Pumped Er/Yb-Doped Multi-Element Fiber Amplifier for Wideband Applications

A cladding-pumped multi-element fiber (MEF) comprising 4-Er/Yb-doped signal fibers and single multimode pump fiber has been used to demonstrate a wideband amplifier. The MEF amplifier has been characterized for different pump powers and signal fiber lengths. A maximum gain of 37 dB and corresponding noise figure of 7.3 dB have been obtained with an input signal of -23 dBm in the C-band. The signal fibers were cascaded to provide >17-dB gain over a 80-nm bandwidth covering a wavelength range of 1536-1615 nm.