What is an optical fiber amplifier?

Optical fiber amplifiers are a key component in optical fiber communication networks. Although wireless communication systems have achieved great development, wired optical fiber communication systems are still extremely important and a main means of security for national finance, security, national defense, etc.

What is an optical fiber amplifier?

The key special project of "Broadband Communications and New Networks" of the national key research and development plan released by the Ministry in 2020 focuses on the problem of weak growth in single-mode optical fiber transmission capacity in response to the significant demand for the rapid growth of trunk bandwidth of optical fiber transmission networks, and expands the working wavelength range of optical transmission systems. Expand to the full band and carry out research on full-band low-noise fiber amplifiers.

Based on broadband active optical fibers based on multi-material systems, we study the physical mechanisms that affect optical amplifier bandwidth, noise, efficiency, crosstalk and other issues, determine technical approaches to obtain full-band, low-noise optical amplifiers, and develop a series of wide-band low-noise optical amplifiers. Build a full-band optical fiber transmission system.

At present, the main fiber amplifier is erbium-doped fiber amplifier operating in the conventional C-band (1530~1565nm). In the shortwave band S-band, there are thulium-doped fiber amplifiers/gain-shifted TDFAs. In the long wave band L-band (1565~1625nm), there are a small number of thulium-doped fluorine-based fiber amplifiers, etc.(but they are rarely available on the market, and L-band fiber amplifiers are basically not solved)[1].

After years of research and development, the key indicators such as bandwidth, gain and noise of these traditional natural ion-doped fiber amplifiers have reached their limits. The fundamental reason is that they are limited by ion energy levels, energy level broadening, and fluorescence lifetime. Inherent and unchangeable intrinsic properties.

The above Xiaobian summary of some of the contents about optical fiber amplifiers, I hope they can help everyone!