Design of a Wideband Hybrid EDFA with a Fiber Raman Amplier

Matheus O. L. Beninca, Maria J. Pontes and Marcelo E. V. Segatto

Abstract This paper presents a new design methodology

for hybrid optical ampliers operating simultaneously at Cand L-bands. Our conguration uses an Erbium Doped Fiber
Amplier (EDFA) operating as a booster to obtain optical gain
over the C-band and a Distributed Raman Amplier (DRA) to
provide gain over the L-band and control the gain ripple. The
amplier performance was computed in terms of on-off gain
and ripple, Optical Signal to Noise Ratio (OSNR), and Noise
Figure (NF). Our results show on-off gain from 17 dB with
ripple up to 2 dB over a 65 nm bandwidth. The OSNR was
higher than 35 dB with NF lower than 4 dB at 120 km. Fiber
links from 90 km up to 180 km have been analyzed.

I. INTRODUCTION
The use of WDM transmission links has became common on modern ber optical telecommunication and one
alternative conguration to extend the ber link to longer
distances and accomplish a non-repeated system is using
erbium doped ber power ampliers (EDFAs). In this booster
conguration the optical ber attenuation and other losses
can be compensated so the system is capable of transmitting
through longer ber links that means tens of kilometers
eliminating in-line ampliers. Furthermore, in this scheme
the total amount of launched power, the bit rate and the
channel spacing all limit one another, thus having a trade-off,
making the design of such systems a challenging task.
As the demand for data trafc and communication
growths, the study for wider bands amplier congurations
[1] - [2] increases as well. Such studies allow the expansion
and upgrade of the already installed ber links. However,
this expansion requires the optimization and simulations to
design the best ampliers that can improve the performance
of an optical network.
The enhancement of the transmission capacity in a communication ber link can be accomplished mainly with
the increase of bit-rate per channel or by simply adding
new wavelength input channels that increase the number
of channels. Both solutions imply in higher total powers
coupled to the ber link, which makes the system more
vulnerable to nonlinear effects.
A possible way to avoid the nonlinear effects in this
case is spreading the input channels throughout the available
amplication bandwidth in order to enlarge the channel
spacing as the bit rate increases. This means, for example
to a ber link that keeps constant the ber length, to explore
a wider bandwidth under amplication. With the purpose to
operate this wide bandwidth applying WDM transmission it
is suitable the use of hybrid ampliers, as it has been reported
The authors are with LABTEL, Laboratory of Telecommunications,
Federal University of Espirito Santo, Av. Fernando Ferrari, Vitoria, Brazil
e-mail matheus.oggioni@gmail.com

978-1-4577-1664-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

over the last decade [3]-[7] . The conguration of the hybrid

amplier proposed in this paper considers a discrete EDFA
connected with a distributed Raman amplier. Nevertheless,
the parameters of these ampliers must be carefully chosen
so the system operates at best cost efciency.
We propose the expansion of a high capacity ber link
that is using only an EDFA as a booster to amplify a 40
WDM input channels with Distributed Raman Amplication
(DRA) in a backward conguration. The operation is over
C+L band and one of the goals is attening the output
signal power. Section II presents the numerical models used
for the EDFA and Raman simulation as well as the system
layout. Section III the simulation results are carried out and,
nally, in Section IV the conclusion of this work with future
proposals are presented.
II. SYSTEM MODELING AND CONFIGURATION
Numerical simulations of the hybrid amplier (EDFA and
Raman) were performed utilizing routines implemented in
the MatLab package. As a rst stage in the simulations,
the commercial software OptiSystem was applied in the
determination of the EDFA output set as a booster amplier.
A numerical model was used in the calculations of Raman
ampliers that considers continuous-wave propagation and
solves the nonlinear Schrodinger equations, which govern the
power interaction between pump and signal powers [8] . The
Raman amplier is set in the distributed conguration that
utilizes the ber transmission as the amplication medium.
A. EDFA Booster
The model for the power amplier chosen for this simulation was a basic amplier with one co-propagating pump
laser operating at 1480 nm wavelength with 100 mW of
pump power. The amplication medium was of 1000 ppm
Er3+ ion concentration in a 5 m doped ber length. This
low cost amplier due to its basic layout is used as a booster
in the C band with a 13 dB average gain and low noise
gure (around 4 dB). This allows channels with -7.7 dBm,
of input power each, to be launched throughout hundreds of
kilometers, depending on the bit-rate and receiver sensitivity.
For this model the power conversion efciency, P CE =
(Pout Pin )/PP ump , was of 77 % where Pout and Pin
are, respectively, output and input power. TABLE I shows
the basic conguration of the EDFA used in the ber link.
Figure 1 shows the EDFA output obtained with OptiSystem. This is a the curve typical to this ber specication with
the booster EDFA operating as a discrete amplier in a ber
link that includes a distributed Raman amplier.

282

TABLE I
C HARACTERISTICS OF THE P OWER A MPLIFIER
EDFA characteristics
Pump wavelength (nm)
Pump Power (mW)
Er 3+ concentration (ppm)
Fiber Length (m)
Gain Range (dBm)
Noise Figure Range (dBm)
Power conversion efciency (%)

Value
1480
100
1000
5
14.71 to 6.65
4.98 to 3.10
77

TABLE II
C HARACTERISTICS OF THE D ISTRIBUTED R AMAN A MPLIFIER , THE
VALUES FOR RIPPLE OVER 150 KM
DRA characteristics
Pump wavelengths (nm)
Pump Powers (mW)
On-Off Gain on C Band (dB)
Ripple on C Band (dB)
On-Off Gain on L Band (dB)
Ripple on L Band (dB)
Total Ripple (dB)

Value
1442 1477 1510
420 325 270
14.29
1.52
19.38
1.69
1.93

C. System Layout

Fig. 1.

Gain versus wavelength in the EDFA.

B. Design of the Distributed Raman Amplier

With the intention to design a hybrid optical amplier able
to explore the C+L band one has to take into account the
EDFA gain prole (see Fig.1), the number of Raman pump
lasers, their power and wavelengths. For economical reasons
it is designed to have a minimum number of pumps.
In general, the gain prole of a DRA is obtained using
analytical [9] or numerical [8] methods. Analytical solutions
are computationally fast but are limited due to certain
approximations. In this work we have used the analytical
method described in [9] as the rst guess to solve the
boundary equations in the numerical method described in [8].
This acceleration technique enables us to compute the gain
prole taking into account effects such as pump depletion,
wavelength dependence of pump and signal loss, amplied
spontaneous emission (ASE) and double Rayleigh scattering
(DRS).
A three pump DRA was designed in order to obtain
maximum gain and minimum ripple over a wide range of
C+L band. As shown in TABLE II the rst pump was placed
at 1442 nm to better compensate the C band ripple. The
remained pumps were placed in 1477 nm and 1510 nm so as
to provide optical gain in the L band. The total pump powers
were limited to approximately 1 W with aim to keep the
safety levels allowed. An exhaustive method was developed
to nd the best pump values. Better results can be found
through optimization procedures such as Genetic Algorithm
(GA) [10] or Particle Swarm (PS) [11] . Table II summarizes
the DRA used in the following simulations.

978-1-4577-1664-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

Figure 2 has the overall system conguration. Several

design choices were made in order to help the amplier
development. The signal wavelength range that was simulated was at rst for the whole C band but it required much
more power from the DRA to atten the output around 1530
nm. This made clear that it was important not to have a
high ripple from the Booster in this band. On the other hand
the L band could have the output attened more easily, that
made the 1548.5 - 1613.5 nm wavelength operation range an
optimum choice for the whole system. The channel spacing
and transmission power were set to 0.2 THz and -5 dBm
respectively, in order to reduce non-linear effects at high bitrates and allow the power amplier to have a better power
efciency. We also included in the simulations a 2 dB loss
at the input WDM multiplexer to get closer to a more real
system. Even though the simulations carried out were of
continuous wave signals the concern for the effects due to
high channel power at closer wavelength spacing were used
to set these arbitrary values of transmission power, channel
spacing and frequency.
TABLE III summarizes the main characteristics of hte
WDM transmission system.

Fig. 2.

The system layout conguration.

III. SIMULATION RESULTS

To validate the DRA designed to compose this hybrid
amplier we simulated the setup shown in Fig.2 to four
distinct ber length 90 km, 120 km, 150 km and 180 km
of low loss single mode ber.
Figure 3 has the signal power at the input, at the EDFA
output and after propagating over different ber lengths. This
shows that the output is kept with a ripple for the C+L
band below 2 dB. From 120 km to 150 km would be more

283

TABLE III
C HARACTERISTICS OF THE WDM TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
WDM characteristics
Number of channels
Signal wavelength range (nm)
Signal channels start frequency (THz)
Signal channels end frequency (THz)
Signal channels frequency space (THz)
Transmitter output power (dBm)
WDM multiplexing loss (dBm)
Average launched power (dBm)
Link length range (km)
Fiber

Value
40
1548.5 1613.5
185.8
193.6
0.2
5
2
7.7
80 to 180
R
DrakaSMF

indicated length for repeated spans containing this hybrid

amplier. Still, this depends on dispersion compensation
and other elements in the link such as demultiplex and
add/drop packages that insert losses. As TABLE IV shows,
the distance growths and the atness deteriorates slightly
since the Raman gain increases almost equally for all the
channels.

gain the OSNR is improved if compared to the rest of the

channels. Even though the individual noise gures from each
amplier, shown at Fig.5, indicates a degraded result for the
shorter wavelengths. The same is observed to the OSNR.

Fig. 4.

The OSNR and the noise gure of the hybrid amplier.

Figure 5 has the effective noise gure for the DRA, and
the equation for this result was based on [12]. We can see
that as distance become longer the effective noise gure of
the DRA improves due to higher on-off gain.

Fig. 3. Power of signal at the start and after the 90 km, 120 km, 150 km
and 180 km ber length.
Fig. 5. The individual Noise gure from each amplier, the DRA has the
effective noise gure.

TABLE IV
R IPPLE FOR DIFFERENT FIBER LENGTH
Length (km)
90
120
150
180

Output (dBm )
1.49
2.84
7.92
13.37

Ripple (dB)
C+L
C
1.95
1.52
1.64
1.51
1.93
1.52
2.06
1.53

L
1.45
1.55
1.69
1.73

Figure 4 shows the optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR)

and the noise gure (NF) of the system as the ber link
distance increases. The OSNR is calculated by the ratio
of signal and amplied spontaneous emission. OSNR at
the EDFA output is taken from the OptiSystem simulation
and the Output OSNR after obtaining the numerical results.
There can be seen that where the EDFA booster gives higher

978-1-4577-1664-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

Considering the Raman On-Off gain, Fig.6 shows how

the power amplier gain was balanced by the DRA. This
contributed for a more at signal output. Besides that, the
low loss ber characteristic is noticed since the gain keeps
improving after 120 km making the effective length [13]
for the Raman pumps larger. Therefore, the performance
of distributed Raman ampliers improves as the link length
increases.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
We have presented a new alternative 3 pump lasers DRA
design to compose with an EDFA booster a Hybrid Amplier
(HA). The HA operates at C+L bands with ripple below 2
dB for hundreds of kilometers. This system has advantages

284

Fig. 6.

The gain for each amplier length.

of a usual DRA, such as improvement of the bandwidth and

a more at output signal. This setup may also suppress some
nonlinear effects, since the arbitrary values of transmission
power, channel spacing and frequency were chosen with the
purpose to mitigate these effects.
This hybrid simulation helps to ll the need for a particular
Hybrid design for systems with only the power amplier in
use. It is possible to include loops on the design and analyze
the behavior of the system with several spans, or use more
channels at a tighter spacing or even a broader bandwidth.
Another proposed work is to adapt the optimization methods
to improve the atness of a HA with equal or less than
4 pumps in order to make it more attractive under cost
analyses.

[8] S. Cani, M. Freitas, R. Almeida, and L. Calmon, Raman amplier

performance of dispersion compensating bers,in Proc. MTT/IEEE
Int. Microw. Optoelectron. Conf., Foz do Iguau, Brazil, pp. 553558,
(2003).
[9] S. N. P. Cani, L. de Calazans Calmon, M. J. Pontes, M. R. N. Ribeiro,
M. E. V. Segatto, and A. Cartaxo, An analytical approximated
solution for the gain of broadband Raman ampliers with multiple
counter-pumps,J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 27, no. 7, pp. 944951, (April
2009).
[10] G. C. M. Ferrera; S. P. N. Cani; M. J. Pontes; M. E. V. Segatto,
Optimization of distributed Raman ampliers using a hybrid genetic
algorithm with geometric compensation technique Vol.3, no. 3, pp390-399 (April 2011).
[11] Hossein Afkhami, Alireza Mowla, Nosrat Granpayeh, and Azadeh
Rastegari Hormozi, Wideband Gain Flattened Hybrid Erbium-doped
Fiber Amplier/Fiber Raman Amplier, J. Opt. Soc. Korea 14, 342350 (2010).
[12] Hansen, P.B.; Eskildsen, L.; Stentz, J.; Strasser, T.A.; Judkins, J.;
DeMarco, J.J.; Pedrazzani, R.; DiGiovanni, D.J.; , Rayleigh scattering
limitations in distributed Raman pre-ampliers , Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE , vol.10, no.1, pp.159-161, (Jan 1998).
[13] C. Headley and G.P. Agrawal, Raman amplication in ber optical
communication systems, Elsevier, pp.41, eq.2.1.11 , (2005).

V. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is partially supported by FAPES and CNPq
under the projects 305024/2009-4 and 134640/2010-1.
R EFERENCES
[1] H. Masuda, Review of wideband hybrid ampliers, OSA/OFC,
(2000).
[2] M. Islam, Raman Ampliers for Telecommunications 2, IEEE J. Sel.
Top. Quantum Electron. 8 (3), 548 (2002).
[3] Hiroji Masuda, Review of Wideband Hybrid Ampliers, NTT
Network Innovation Laborator ies,Proceedings of 2000 Optical Fiber
Conference (OFC2000), Paper TuAI, Vol. I, pp.2-4, (March 2000).
[4] Seung Kwan Kim, Sun Hyok Chang, Jin Soo Han, and Moo Jung
Chu, Design of Hybrid Optical Ampliers for High Capacity Optical
Transmission ETRI Journal, Volume 24, Number 2, (April 2002).
[5] Ju Han Lee, Dispersion-Compensating Raman/EOIA Hybrid Amplifer Recycling Residual Pump for Efciency Enhancement,IEEE
Photonics Technology Letter, vol 17, No 1, (2005).
[6] Shien-Kuei Liaw, Investigate C+L Band EDFA/Raman Ampliers by
Using the Same Pump Lasers, Proceedings of 9th Join Conference
on Information Sciences (JCIS2006), Paper PNC- I I, (October 2006).
[7] C. Rivera, R. Olivares, M. Giraldi, A. Barbero, M. Pontes, M. Segatto,
M. Martinez, J. Costa, Numerical Simulations and Experimental
Results of a Hybrid EDFA-Raman Amplier, SBMO/IEEE MTT-S
International Microwave & Optoelectronics Conference (IMOC2009),
(2009).

978-1-4577-1664-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

285