Effect of cascading amplification stages on the performance of serial hybrid fiber amplifier

Abstract

This study demonstrates simulation and experimental validation of a wideband serial hybrid Raman/erbium-doped fiber amplifier. Two configurations are adopted; in type A, a Raman amplifier is the first stage, and in type B, an erbium-doped fiber amplifier is the first stage. At low input signal power, the average gain level is 20 dB with a flat gain bandwidth of 40 nm for both configurations. The noise figure in type B is dominated by the erbium-doped fiber amplifier and produces lower values and flatter spectra than in type A. The gain of the proposed hybrid amplifiers is affected more by the second amplification stage. Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.