On the Benefits of Optical Gain-Clamped Amplification in Optical Burst Switching Networks

Abstract

Abstract-This paper investigates the performance of an all-optical method for amplification gain control to be applied in the next generation of optical networks. An erbium-doped fiber amplifier is implemented in a simple and passive all-optical configuration known as optical gain-clamped optical amplifier (OA). The paper investigates the dynamic performance of the OA and discusses the interplay of amplifier dynamics with different traffic statistics. The investigation concerns exhaustive characterization of bit error rate performances under typical optical burst switching (OBS) traffic as well as special case of sudden power variation at the amplifier input. All obtained results show a reduction in the amplifier output power overshot compared to the case where the same OA operates without any gain stabilization technique. As an example, in the typical OBS traffic scenario, a reduction of 3 dB is observed.

Comparative Studies of Thulium and Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifiers for Dynamic Optical WDM Networks

“…A simple and robust method to reduce the effect of gain dynamic is by clamping the amplification gain via a lasing feedback signal. This technique has been investigated for EDFAs in the C-band region [10], for TDFAs in S-band [11] and for TDFA in 2 μm region [12].…”

Gain variation induced by power transient in thulium-doped fiber amplifier at 2 µm and its reduction by optical gain clamping technique

“…Power variations influence the gain of the optical amplifier when it operates in the saturation region. These variations in the amplifier gain lead to dynamic power fluctuations of surviving burst channels [9]. As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio of the received channels degrades.…”

Gain control dynamics of thulium-doped fibre amplifier at 2 μm

“…Several methods have been developed in order to avoid this effect. Optical gain-clamping (OGC) is one wellknown method to eliminate gain dynamic effects using a laser feedback signal for EDFAs 11,12 . Additionally, the OGC-TDFA in the S-band was investigated experimentally 13,14 .…”