First Demonstration of Cladding Pumped Few-moded EDFA for Mode Division Multiplexed Transmission

Abstract

Abstract:We report the first experimental demonstration of a cladding pumped FM-EDFA supporting 4 mode groups. The modal gains are measured to be >20dB between 1540nm-1570nm with a modal differential gain of ~4dB among the mode groups.

Space-division multiplexing: the next frontier in optical communication

“…The effect of mode beating on the performance of FM-EDFAs [149] and transverse mode competition [139] have also been analyzed. A claddingpumped FM-EDFA has also been experimentally demonstrated [150].…”

Optical technologies for space division multiplexing

“…Optical amplification is achieved by exciting the erbium ions located in the fiber core by means of either cladding pumping [21][22][23] or core pumping [24]. While cladding pumping is simpler in terms of the coupling optics, the conversion efficiency from pump to signal power is difficult to optimize.…”

“…As shown in Fig.1, the FMF is a variant of the well-known multi-mode fiber where a single core supports propagation of only a small number of higher-order mode groups, e.g. LP 11 and LP 21 . The MCF, on the other hand, incorporates multiple cores in the same cladding where each core can be operated either in a single-mode or few-mode configuration.…”

Minimizing differential modal gain in cladding-pumped EDFAs supporting four and six mode groups

“…The first demonstration of cladding pumped Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier supporting four mode groups (4M-EDFA) reported a DMG (i.e. the maximum gain difference among all the signal modes at the same wavelength) of around 4 dB [7]. When developing FM EDFAs minimizing DMG is of paramount importance in ensuring the best overall system performance and the DMG fundamentally arises from difference in the overlap between pump, signal and rare earth dopants between modes.…”