OPTOELEOTRONIOS LETTERS

Vol. 2 No. 1,15 Jan.2006

S-band gain flattened distributed fiber Raman amplifier with chirped fiber bragg grating filter*
D A I B i - z h i 1 , Z H A N G Z a i - x u a n 1 . * , LI C h e n - x i a ~'2 , LIU H o n g - l i n g 1'2 , W A N G I N S O O S. K I M 3 Jian-feng I , and

1. Optoelectronic Technology Institute, China Jiliang University, Hc~gzhou 31O018, China 2. College of Opt/m/and Electronics, University of Shangl~i for Science and Technology, 8hanghai 200093, China 3. Optical Technology Research Group, Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, Seoul 437- 808,Korea

(Received 4 September 2005) S-band gain flattened distributed fiber Raman amplifier with a bandwidth from 1 488 nm to 1 541 nm (53 nm in width) ,an averaged gain of 10 dB and a gain ripple of 4-0.6 dB is obtained successfully, in which a single-wavelength high power fiber Raman laser with wavelength of 1 427.2 nm is used as the pump and the chirped fiber Bragg grating is used as the gain flattening filter. Besides,filter wavelength division multiplexer(FWDM) is used as the multi-signal multiplexer and 1 427 nm/1 505 nm coarse wavelength division multiplexer(OWDM) is used as the pump-signal coupler. The gain media are G652 fiber of 50 km in length and dispersion compensation fiber(DOF) of 5 km in length. Moreover ,the location arrangements of different type of fibers and the effect caused by gain flattening filter as well as their solutions are discussed in detail. It is very significant to extend the range of optical fiber communication band and increase the capacity of fiber communication especially for ultra-long haul and ultra-high capacity communication system.
CLC number:TN253 Document code.A Article ID.1673-1905(2006)01-0009-03

IPTV, video-phone, video-conference, distance learning, distance medical, e-governmental affairs, etc. will become common things in people's daily life with the fast development of Internet technology. During this process extra-capacity of fiber communication system is required for meeting these demands, and Raman amplifier(FRA) will play a very important role in this process because of its advantages known to us E1al. But there are two problems that we have to solve for really using FRA. One is new to obtain a high power pump source~ the other is how to make amplifier's gain flatten to meet the requirements of DWDM system. With the high-power laser technology becoming mature, the gain-flattening problem becomes the most important one for fiber Raman amplifier. For the problem of flattening gain, there are two ways that can be used. One is using several LDs as pump sources Ea'~l. This method is frequently used because a wide-band and gain flattened fiber Raman amplifier can be obtained through optimizing the wavelengths and the powers of pump lasers. Although it is a good way to make fiber Raman amplifier, the polarization characteristic and the relatively low power in fiber corn* This work was supported by the Great Scientific Research Project of Zhejiang Province,P. R. China (No. 021101558) and the Ministry of Science and Technology ,Korea as a part of project funds of the Korea-China Optical Technology Research Center. E-maihzhangzx@mail. hz. zj. cn

munication band of LDs are its biggest shortcomings. The other way that can also solve the gain flatten problem of FRA is using a single high power fiber laser as the pump source, and then adding one proper filter to flatten the gain spectrum of the amplifier. Our solution is using a single-wavelength high power fiber Raman laser as the pump and a chirped fiber Bragg grating as the gain flattening filter to realize fiber Raman amplifier's gain flattening and to obtain a wide bandwidth S-band gain flattened distributed fiber Raman amplifier. In the continuing condition, the couple equations of the pump light and signal light can be described as below
dI, d~ = gRIpIs -- Gls die
dz

(1) (2)

__

~
COs

-- apIp

* *

where Ip and I, are the intensity of pumped and signal light respectively;gR is Raman gain coefficient;% and a, are fiber loss coefficients of pump and signal wavelength respectively i cop and ws are angular frequencies of pumped and signal light respectively. When signal and pump light propagate at the same time in the single mode fiber and timely frequency shift is in the bandwidth ot: Raman gain spectrum of pump light, the signal light will be amplified during propagating in the fiber because pump light generates stimulated Raman scattering (SRS).

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Optoelectron

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When the pump light depletion caused by signals was neglected,we can get from Eqs. (1) and (2) that the on-off gain of Raman amplifier as below
GA = exp(gRPoLeJAoff)

chirp degree of grating. If the matrices of all sections of grating are known, we can get the output amplitude of chirped fiber grating as below

(3)
SN ] : FN 9 FN-1 ~ FN-2 . . . . . Fa 9 F2 9 F1 9 So

where P0 = IoAof~ is the pump light power of inputting port, Lorf is the effective length of fiber and Ao~fis the effective area of fiber. For different frequency shift, Raman gain coefficient is different. So the gain spectrum of Raman amplifier pumped by single laser is not flattening. If we want to obtain wide flattening gain spectrum, we have to use the filter to flatten the gain spectrum of Raman amplifier just like the EDFA. For wide-band filter, generally speaking, there are three filters that can be used, named chirped fiber Bragg grating, long period fiber grating and film filter. Unfortunately, although long period fiber grating has a wideband filtering spectrum, its dimension is so large that it is inappropriate to encapsulate. For film filter, its insert loss is relatively large; moreover, its peak-to-peak error function is large too. So we choose the chirped fiber Bragg grating as gain flattening filter and actually it is the most appropriate as wide-band filter for single-pump Raman amplifier LB. Frequently, the chirped fiber Bragg grating can be equivalent to combination of lots of uniform fiber Bragg grating. The propagation characteristic of each uniform section can be described by a matrix F~ as below

(8) Some important factors have to be considered for designing the gain flattening filter. Firstly, we have to decide the amplifier's gain bandwidth, averaged gain and gain ripple. Secondly, we should design the target loss spectrum according to the bandwidth we choose. Thirdly, we should design and manufacture the gain flattening filter based on target loss spectrum and gain ripple requirement that has the actual significance in communication system. The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1, where the signal source is ECL (external cavity laser) consisting of four channels and the adjusting range of wavelength of each channel is 100 nm. The total wavelength range of signal source is between 1440 nm and 1 600 nm,and the range of its output power is between 7 dBm and -3 dBm. The bandwidth of signal spectrum is less than 100 MHz. FWDM(Filter Wavelength Division Multiplexer) is used as the multiplexer of signals. 1427 nm/1 505 nm CWDM (coarse wavelength division multiplexer) is used as pump-signal coupler. Pump source is a fiber Raman laser with the wavelength of 1 427.2 nm and the bandwidth of 0. 67 nm. The adjusting range of its output power is 0-1 200 mw. The gain media are 50 km G652 fiber and 5 km DCF fiber that is used for dispersion compensation. The spectrum range of OSA (Optical Spectrum Analyzer) is 600 nm1700 nm,and the resolution and dynamic range are 10 pm and 60 dB respectively. The gain flattened filter(GFF) is chirped fiber Bragg grating. Firstly,we test the gain and noise figure spectra(NF) of fiber Raman amplifier before inserting the gain flattened filter. In this test, the pump power we set is 1200 mW and the signal power of each channel is -5 dBm. The test results are shown in Fig. 2. Then, according to the principle of the second section, we choose the bandDCF 5 km G65250 km

where i means the ith section of chirped fiber Bragg grating,Ri and & represent the amplitudes of forward and backward propagating mode respectively. The matrix Fi is defined as F6'8
A

Fi=-I c~

7 i ~-sinh(yAL)l cosh(TAL)-[-i ~-sinh(YAL) (5) J

Li ~sinh(TAL)

where AL represents the length of each section of the chirped fiber grating that is divided averagely and y = ~ , where ki and ai represent the coupling coefficient and self-coupling coefficient of i th section respectively, and they are defined as & = TvS~z~ff 1
1) AB 1 d~o 2 dz

(6)
(7)

Multi signaIlaser

.... "'"1

In these equations 8near is the refractive index change spatially along this section of grating,v is the fringe visibility of index change, and (1/2)dq~/dz describes the

Fig. 1 Backwardpumped S-band gain flattened distributed fiber Raman amplifier setup

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width of Raman amplifier to be 50 nm(1 490 nm-1 540 nm)and the target averaged gain to be about 10 dB. The expected ripple range of gain is -+-1 dB. To meet the designing request, we first plot the target loss spectrum. Afterwards, we carefully design the chirped fiber Bragg grating filter that can match the target loss spectrum and can be used to fulfill the gain flattening of S-band fiber Raman amplifier. The actual and target loss spectra of filter are shown in Fig. 3. 25 20 15 10 5 0
--5

fiber is 16.56 km when the pump wavelength is 1 427.5 nm, the pump power will mainly focus on the G652 fiber not on DCF. As we know, this amplifying way is distributed amplifying, so the effect of other nonlinearity of fiber caused by discrete amplifying(using DCF only) can be controlled effectively and the noise figure can be improvedES~.Secondly,we can not insert the gain flatten filter simply, because there will be lots of reflection light if the chirped fiber Bragg grating is used as gain flatten filter. The reflection light of signals will potentially affect the forward transmitting signals and backward pump laser, so we should add an isolator between the pump laser and the gain flatten filter as shown in Fig. 1. This isolator is very important, otherwise the whole fiber Raman amplifier will have unexpected result. 25 .-. 20

. . . . . . . Noise figure

-10 1 485

1 500

1 515 1 530 Wavelength(nm)

1 545

9 15 N
,

lO
5i .......
01
L

Fig. 2

The on-off gain and noise figure spectra of fiber Raman amplifier before inserting the gain flattened filter

Withoutfilter Withfilter
I I i

14

1 485

1 500

12 10
Fig. 4

l 515 1 530 Wavelength(nm)

1 545

The on-off gain spectra of fiber Raman

amplifier with and without gain-flattened filter

6 4 In summary, S-band gain flatten distributed fiber Raman amplifier with bandwidth from 1488nm to 1541 nm (53 nm),10 dB averaged gain and +_0.6 dB gain ripple is successfully obtained,in which pump is a single high power fiber Raman laser and gain flatten filter is chirped fiber Bragg grating. Besides, the location arrangements of different type of fibers and the effect caused by gain flattening filter as well as its solution are discussed in detail. It is very significant for extending the range of fiber communication band and increasing the capacity of fiber communication especially for ultra-long haul and ultra-high capacity communication system.
References EI~ ZhangZai-xuan, Jin Shang-zhong, and Wang jian-feng, Proceedings of SPIE,4579(2001),54. E2~ MohammmedN. Islam, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 8 (2002), 548. E3~ YangTaotao,Yin Xinda,He Wanhui,and Fu Chengpeng,ACTA OPTIOA SINIOA ,22(2002) ,1336. E4~ Victor E. Perlin,Herbert,and G. WinfuI,OFC,2002,57. ES~ HuangLiqun, Wang Li, Wang Zhi, and Huang Weiping, Chinose Journal of Laser ,31 (2004) ,829. ~6~ T. Erdogan,J. Lightwave Tech,15(1997),1277. ET~ Ricard Feced,Michalis N. Zervas,and M. A. Muriel, IEEE J. Quantum Electron, 35 ( 1999), 1105. ~8~ Zhang Zaixuan,Liu Hongling,Dai BizN, Xu Haifeng,and Gang Dan, The Journal of China Jiliang University, 16(2005) ,93.

0 1 485

1 500

1 515 Wavelength(nm)

1 530

1 545

Fig. 3

The actual and target loss spectra of filter

After considering all of previously mentioned factors, we successfully designed a gain flattened S-band distributed dispersion compensation Raman amplifier using single high power fiber Raman laser as pump and chirped Bragg fiber grating as gain flattening filter. The on-off gain spectra of fiber Raman amplifier with and without gain-flattened filter are shown in Fig. 4. This amplifier has bandwidth of 53 nm (1 488 nm-1 541 nm) and 10 dB averaged gain with --+_0.6 dB gain ripple that can meet the requirements of optical fiber communication. Moreover, we also have to consider some other factors that can affect the performance of FRA. Firstly the different location arrangements of two different fibers will yield very different results. We made DCF locate in the front of G652 fiber, so pump light will enter into G652 fiber first. Because the effective length of 50 km G652