Performance comparison of Zr-based and Bi-based erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

Abstract

In this Letter, we present a comprehensive comparison of the performance of a zirconia-based erbium-doped fiber amplifier (Zr-EDFA) and a bismuth-based erbium-doped fiber amplifier (Bi-EDFA). The experimental results reveal that a Zr-EDFA can achieve comparable performance to the conventional Bi-EDFA for C-band and L-band operations. With a combination of both Zr and Al, we could achieve a high erbium-doping concentration of about 2800 ppm (parts per million) in the glass host without any phase separations of rare earths. The Zr-based erbium-doped fiber (Zr-EDF) was fabricated using in a ternary glass host, zirconia-yttria-aluminum codoped silica fiber through a solution-doping technique along with modified chemical vapor deposition. At a high input signal of 0 dBm, a flat gain at average value of 13 dB is obtained with a gain variation of less than 2 dB within the wavelength region of 1530-1575 nm and using 2 m of Zr-EDF and 120 mW pump power. The noise figures are less than 9.2 at this wavelength region. It was found that a Zr-EDFA can achieve even better flat-gain value and bandwidth as well as lower noise figure than the conventional Bi-EDFA.

Rare earths: jewels for functional materials of the future

“…Bismuth-based EDFAs have been tested for high gain compact amplifiers; however, their splicing is difficult, so that zirconium-based EDFAs with comparable performance have been proposed, which eliminate this drawback. 9 A second solution is to resort to polymer fibres, for instance polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) fibres in which erbium complexes with organic ligands are doped. The resulting erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers (EDWAs) have definite technical advantages over silica EDFAs: better flexibility and larger diameter, allowing better coupling to local-scale splitters, couplers, and multiplexers, as well as much lower pump threshold.…”

Luminescent Properties and Optical Amplification of Erbium‐Doped Nano‐Engineered Scandium‐Phospho‐Yttria‐Alumina‐Silica Glass Based Optical Fiber

“…The glass formers, SiO 2 and P 2 O 5 , were incorporated in the core matrix of the optical fiber preform through the MCVD process, where P 2 O 5 served as a nucleating agent that facilitates phase separation and assists generation of Er‐enriched nano‐crystallites . Selection of Sc 2 O 3 and Y 2 O 3 allows enhancing radiative transitions between electronic levels of RE's ions due to their low phonon energy compared to silica.…”

Supercontinuum from Zr-EDF using Zr-EDF mode-locked fiber laser

“…The addition of zirconia and aluminum ions into the glass host allows for a high erbium doping concentration of about 1500 ppm to be obtained without any clustering of the rareearths ions, while small amounts of Y 2 O 3 and P 2 O 5 ions serve as the nucleating agents to increase the phase separation between the erbium ion-doped micro crystallites in Figure 1 (online color at www.lphys.org) Schematic diagram for generating mode-locked fiber laser and SC in a Zr-EDF. LD -laser diode, WDM -wavelength division multiplexor, PBSpolarization beam splitter, AC -autocorrelator, OSA -optical spectrum analyzer, PC -polarization controller, and Zr-EDFzirconia based erbium-doped fiber the core matrix of optical fiber preform [25,26]. The advantage of the zirconia-based host is that it is useful in generating ultra-short pulses as a result of its wide-band characteristic.…”