National Conference on Advancements In Engineering And Technology, Management And Sciences on 23rd April 2016

A SURVEY ON GAIN FLATTENING IN HYBRID AMPLIFIER

IN OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
Neha Dharwaal1*, Anu Sheetal1
Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engineering
G.N.D.U., Regional Campus
Gurdaspur, India

Karamdeep Singh2, Shivinder Devra2

Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engineering
G.N.D.U.
Amritsar, India

Abstract

Hybrid optical amplifiers (HOAs) are vitally

important for broadband band amplification, and are generally
arranged in high-capacity dense wavelength division multiplexed
systems (DWDM). We review the current state-of-the-art in this fast
developing field. In addition, theoretical background and various
inline configurations of optical amplifiers have been presented.
Several issues such as gain flatness, gain bandwidth, transient effect,
and crosstalk were presented in HOAs. Outcomes show that the
HOAs provide better gain flatness without using any expensive gain
flattening techniques, and an acceptable range of gain, noise figure,
bit error rate. In this paper, the prior outcomes of gain and noise
figure are discussed.
Keywords Erbium doped fiber amplifier(EDFA), Hybrid
amplifier, Raman amplifier, Semiconductor optical amplifier(SOA),
Ytterbium doped fiber amplifier(YDFA)

I.

INTRODUCTION

Communication system transmits information from one

place to another separated by few kilometers or by thousands
of kilometers. To send more data at higher speed large
bandwidth is required, current efforts of research and
development are aiming at increasing the total capacity of
medium and long haul optical transmission systems. High
bandwidth demanding internet application and services for
residential subscribers as well as for corporate subscribers.
The best solution for higher bandwidth is the optical
communication technology. The most recent information
indicates that multimedia and high-capacity wavelength
division multiplexed (WDM) networks need high bandwidths.
The optical fiber is the only medium that offers such a huge
bandwidth by means of a better performance. Since 1980s,
optical fiber communication was one of the better alternatives
for the rapidly growing industries. It can also be used to fulfill
the demands of broadband applications.
In fiber optic communication, the signal degrades as it
travels along the fiber and this loss can be compensated by the
use of optoelectronic regenerators. By using the regenerators
firstly, the signal is converted in to electrical signal and then
after amplifying it is further converted in to optical. By using

these regenerators with WDM system the system became

complex and expensive. To eliminate these losses optical
amplifier is used. By using optical amplifier there is no need
to convert the signal in to electrical. At preset research and
developments are tensing at increasing the total capacity of the
system.
At present, the HOAs are promising and widely used
technology for todays high-speed broadband applications to
enhance the system performance without using costly
techniques. Like most technologies, HOAs also come with
some drawbacks that should be taken into account. These
include transient response, induced crosstalk, as well as other
sources of noise that are particular to fiber Raman amplifiers
(FRAs), such as double Rayleigh backscattering, pumpmediated relative intensity noise transfer, and problems with
nonlinearities, due to high-path average power in the fibers.
The aim behind proposing the HOA is to: (1) increase the gain
bandwidth of a WDM system with the least gain variation
over the effective bandwidth, (2) reduce the losses due to
induced nonlinearities, and (3) avoid the constraint of highcost gain flattening filters and multi pumps for large gain
flatness.
In general, the combination of more than one optical
amplifier in any configuration is called an HOA. Islaam
described the net gain of the hybrid Raman-erbium doped
fiber amplifier (EDFA) HOA, Hybrid, as the sum of the two
individual gains (in dB) of Raman and EDFA, respectively.
Therefore, in the case of Raman-EDFA HOA the net gain is

GHybrid =GEDFA + GRaman

By cascading amplifiers, the performance of the system
can be enhanced.
Masum-Thomas et al. [1] used discrete Raman amplifier
with Thulium doped fluoride fiber to form hybrid amplifier.
He demonstrated that when bandwidth is 75nm, then gain >
20dB was attained and for 50 nm bandwidth the gain > 30dB
and noise figure between 7 and 8dB was attained.

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National Conference on Advancements In Engineering And Technology, Management And Sciences on 23rd April 2016
Fig.1 Block Diagram of EDFA
Pizzinat et al. [2] analyze the effect of EDFA/distributed
Raman amplification WDM system by considering the noise
properties of Raman amplification at high data rate. He
observed that pure Raman amplification let the BER constant
whereas input power decreases to about 6dB.
Paschotta et al. [3] explained that YDFA is likely to find
wider use because of its broad bandwidth and efficient
performance. He also investigated that YDFA offers number of
interesting applications in near future because of its broad
amplification bandwidth.
Moghaddam et al. [4] analyzed the performance of
erbiumytterbium doped fiber amplifier (EYDFA) and
observed that in wavelength range from 1541 to 1565nm using
a multimode pumping at 927nm EYDFA achieve output power
higher than 23dB and flat gain.
Kaler et al. [5] analyze 16, 32 and 64 channel WDM
systems at 10Gb/s with EDFA, Raman and SOA amplifier by
considering the transmission distance and dispersion. He
observed that when dispersion is 2ps/nm/km and channels are
less SOA provide best results and performance drastically
degrades as the as the channels increases. Performance of
EDFA is better than SOA. Raman amplifiers reduce the effect
of non linearities and provide better performance in L-band. In
this paper, we extend the previous work by considering 32
channels for ytterbium amplifier as an in-line-amplifier
II.

INTRODUCTION OF EACH TYPE OF OPTICAL AMPLIFIER

A. Erbium doped fiber amplifier

The optical amplifiers play a key role in limiting the
attenuation of optical communication network. Optical
amplifiers compensate for propagation losses in long distance
links and branching losses in access networks, at the same
time avoiding costly two-way conversions between optical and
electrical signals. By optical amplification the network
performance is increased and also optical amplification results
in lowering the number of repeaters and thereby simplifying
the network. EDFA was the first optical amplifier widely used
in optical communications systems, and it resulted in a
dramatic growth in transmission capacity with the deployment
of wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems. EDFAs
are very widely deployed and are the basis of the vast majority
of optically amplified systems.
input
amplified data

EDFA

signal

The heart of EDFA is a single mode fiber, the core of

which is doped with Er3+ ions. Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier
used to boost the intensity of optical signals being carried
through a fiber optic communications system. Has a fiber
whose core is heavily doped with Erbium ions Works on the
concept of stimulated emission Operates in the C band (15301560) and L band (1570-1610).Gain flattening filters (GFF)
assure flat gain (<1 dB variance) over the entire amplified
band (Wide-Band models only)
The EDFA consists of three basic components: length of
erbium doped fiber, pump laser and wavelength selective
coupler to combine the signal and pump wavelengths as
shown in figure. The optimum fiber length used depends upon
the pump power, input signal power, amount of erbium doping
and pumping wavelength [6] The gain depends on various
parameters like doping concentration, active fiber length,
pump power, core radius, erbium radius, numerical aperture,
signal input power, signal bandwidth, pumping wave- length,
etc.For long distance communication, EDFAs with more
pumping power and larger length are available these days. So
more and more research is being done to use EDFAs in WDM
Usually, the gain of EDFA is not flat. Therefore, the gain
flattening of EDFA is the most important feature especially for
the multi-channel amplification WDM systems. EDFA are low
noise, compact, highly efficient with high gain, and capable of
amplifying multichannel signals on different wavelength at a
time and hence quite economical for WDM transmissions.
B. Raman Amplifier
Raman scattering occurs in any silica glass which means if
we inject an optical beam (pump) in an optical fiber, then a
signal passing through that fiber will be amplified if its
frequency is around the shifted frequency of the pump. This is
called Stock shift, which is a round 13 GHz (equivalent to
about 100 nm) from the pump propagating beam frequency
assuming that its wavelength is 1450 nm [3]. That means the
signal will be amplified if its wavelength is 1550 nm. Raman
amplifiers are based on this phenomenon. There are two main
Raman Amplifiers RAs distributed and discrete or lumped like
EDFA's. In distributed types, amplification occurs all along
the fiber between say two stations with the pump placed either
near the transmitter in which case it is called forward pumping
or near the receiver in which case it is called backward
pumping. So in distributed RA, the fiber itself is acting as an
amplifier which is of great advantage. What is exciting in RAs
is the use of DCF to compensate for chromatic dispersion and
loss. This can be done by increasing the pump power. But if
the number of cascaded amplifiers increases, then gain
fluctuation might occur. One way to deal with this situation is
to optimize the multi span amplifiers jointly rather than
individually. A neural model was presented to design a RA
taking into consideration the optimal pump power
configuration to calculate on-off gain spectrum and NF

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National Conference on Advancements In Engineering And Technology, Management And Sciences on 23rd April 2016

C. Ytterbium doped fiber amplifier

Ytterbium doped fiber laser was demonstrated as early as
1988. The electronic structure of ytterbium ions with only the
two major energy levels involved in light amplification, the
ground level manifold and a higher excited manifold. The
main recompose of ytterbium doped gain come up from the
only one excited state manifold is involved in the laser
transition. the comparatively small energy gap between both
results in low quantum defects. As a result, high power
effectiveness is possible, and many detrimental special effects
such as thermal effects, quenching and excited state inclusion
are drastically reduced. For wavelength less than 1080 nm,
similar to quasi 3 level system the lower laser transition state
is situated near to the ground state. Significantly superior than
ground level and therefore the system exhibit a 4 level
performance. Due to the large gap between the ground and
lower laser level population inversion is achieved. Regardless
of the disadvantages that is re-absorption losses and prominent
ASE, YDFA have any advantages such as high power
efficiency, low thermal effects and high bandwidth. Due to
these advantages YDFAs are especially attractive for high
power and ultra-short pulse propagation applications. YDFAs
are mostly used for its broad bandwidth and efficient
performance.

40nm

50nm

Noise

Low

Low

Very Low

Polarizati
on

0dB

>few
mW

0dB

Optical
pump
power

20
to
50mw

NA

100 to 500mW

III.

GAIN BANDWIDTH AND GAIN FLATNESS

The gain bandwidth product of the optical amplifiers must

be large for an optical communication system in order to
transmit multimedia information signals from a large number
of users. In literature, various conventional optical amplifiers
(SOA, EDFA, Raman, waveguide amplifier, and so on) are
reported, but the gain shape is not flattened over the
wavelength grid. The gain depends upon the wavelength of the
input signal and is restricted by the width of the radiating
energy bands. Therefore, HOAs are the best alternative; they
not only provide the largest gain bandwidth, but also produce
a flat gain shape even without using any costly gain flattening
techniques.

D. Semiconductor optical amplifier

Output-level control that accepts a wide range of input
power and delivers constant output power is essential for inline optical amplifiers, optical burst and packet systems and in
all optical regeneration and reshaping (2R). Semiconductor
optical amplifiers SOA's can meet this demand. The reason for
this is because SOA has short carrier lifetime of about several
tenths to several hundreds of picoseconds compared to several
hundred microseconds to several milliseconds in EDFA's. To
control the output level of SOA's, external light injection can
be used. It was found out that even if the level of the input
signal changed by 13.5-18.5 dB at 1530-1560 nm modulated
at 10 Gb/s, the output level remained constant at + 10 dBm.
This method of level control is used in photonic networks.
Table 1 Comparison between optical
Amplifier
Features

EDFA

SOA

RAMAN

Wavelen
gth
of
operation

15251565nm

Any(But
limited
to<50n
m B.W)

Any,
depend
on
Pump
wavelength
and power

Gain
bandwidt

10

20

20 to 50nm

to

to

Fig. 2 Gain and noise figure characterization of optimized

EDFA-Raman HOA
The gain flatness can be improved by using various gain
flattening techniques (such as filters, DCF, FBG, and so on)

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National Conference on Advancements In Engineering And Technology, Management And Sciences on 23rd April 2016
but this leads to an expensive system. For a cost effective
solution, we have optimized the various parameters of a
hybrid EDF-Raman amplifier using a genetic algorithm to
attain better gain flatness [8]. The gain and an NF spectrum of
the optimized EDFA-Raman HOA over a 100 channel DWDM
system. The variation of the gain with wavelength is not
uniform as each amplifier induces its own nonlinearities and
ASE noise. It can be observed that each frequency has a gain
of more than 18 dB. With an optimized HOA, a flat gain
of >18dB>18dB is obtained from a frequency region of 187
to 189.5 THz with a gain variation of less than 1.35 dB
without using any gain flattening technique. The obtained NF
is also the lowest value (<2dB/channel<2dB/channel) ever
reported for a proposed HOA at a reduced channel spacing
(25 GHz).

IV.

The field of HOAs remains a lively and rapidly

developing one. The HOAs are one of the possible ways to
amplify the broad gain bandwidth product with a minimum
gain variation among the channels. These amplifiers have been
presented with the purpose of identifying new applications and
limitations for its use in future optical communication
systems. The HOAs are recommended for a high-capacity
DWDM system having a large gain bandwidth and/or large
gain flatness with less error. The HOAs are recommended for
a high-capacity DWDM system having a large gain bandwidth
and/or large gain flatness with less error.

References

Table 2 comparison of different hybrid amplifier at different

parameters
parameter

L-Band

Raman+

Raman+

EDFA+

EDFA

FBG+DCF

Raman+

Raman+

EDFA+

EDFA

DCF

(2013)
[12]

HOA

(2011)

2013

(2011)

[10]

[11]

[9]
Gain

>12dB

>4dB

>10dB

>11dB

Gain
Flatness

~1.2dB

<0.5dB

<4.5dB

<3dB

Number of
channel/cha
nnel
spacing

Channel:3
5

Channels:26

Channel
160

Channel
100

Spacing

Spacing

0.1THz

0.2nm

3.95THz

1.5Thz

Gain
Bandwidth

Spacing:1
nm
23.5nm

80nm

Table 2 describes the comparison of important

performance parameters (output and input) of our proposed
HA with current state-of-the-art schemes. This comparison has
been done to determine the level of knowledge and the
development achieved in a technique. In Table 2, currently
published 2011 to 2013 snapshots of the various HOAs stateof-the-art schemes are presented.

CONCLUSION

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