Abstract

Excellent gain performance has been achieved from diode-pumped erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA) and they are now accepted as a basic building block of future optical fiber communications networks. Nevertheless, EDFAs are still being refined in several key areas. These include optimum pump wavelength, fiber design, and distributed amplifiers as well as techniques to tailor the gain spectrum. In addition, control aspects such as supervisory and automatic gain control as well as the associated components are under investigation.

© 1991 Optical Society of America