Influence of power transients from gain-clamped EDFA on optical receiver BER performance

It is found that the down-shoot portion of power transients from gain-clamped EDFAs (erbium doped fiber amplifiers) is the major cause for the deterioration of the receiver bit error ratio, even in systems free of fiber nonlinearity and OSNR degradation. The influence on a 10 Gb/s system is more serious than on a 2.5 Gb/s system.