Noise reduction in long-haul lightwave all-amplifier systems

The overall gain of a chain of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers in a long-haul all-amplifier system would be automatically stabilized if each amplifier were operated slightly into saturation. However, with the required low level of amplifier output power which is imposed by nonlinearity in the transmission fiber, the resulting pump power becomes too low to effectively invert the gain medium of the amplifiers. Consequently, the amplifier output noise level becomes too high for proper system operation. This problem is solved by pumping the amplifiers harder so that a higher gain and higher output power are achieved. The excess gain is then counteracted by an appropriate value of post-amplifier loss. Because of the higher pump power in this case, the amplifier noise is reduced significantly. This technique is investigated theoretically, and experimental work that verifies it is reported