Wideband Hybrid Fiber Amplifier Using Er-Doped Fiber and Raman Medium

In this paper, we report the experimental results of a hybrid wideband fiber amplifier. The amplifying medium is a concatenated hybrid fiber consisting of Er-doped fiber (EDF) and dispersion compensating fiber (DCF). The gain mechanisms are based on stimulated emission in the EDF and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in the DCF. Since we simultaneously use optical amplification by the two processes, the gain bandwidth is easily expanded over 105 nm by a two-tone pumping scheme. Using an experimental setup constructed with a hybrid structure of EDF-DCF-EDF, we analyzed the spectral behavior of amplified spontaneous emission for pumping powers. We achieved an optical gain of over 20 dB in the wavelength range from 1,500 to 1,600 nm under optimized pumping conditions to make the spectral gain shape flat.