Optical Amplifiers

Optical amplifiers operate completely in the optical domain to

boost the power levels of multiple light wave signals over the
operating
In-line range.
Optical Amplifiers:
Used to compensate for transmission loss and increase distance
between regenerative repeaters.
Preamplifier:
Used to amplify weak signals before photo detection so that SNR
degradation caused by thermal noise in the receiver
electronics can be suppressed.
Compared with other front-end devices such as APDs or Optical
heterodyne detectors, an optical preamplifier provides a larger
gain factor and a broader bandwidth
Power Amplifiers
Power or booster amplifier applications include placing the device
immediately after an optical transmitter to boost the
transmitted power.This serves to increase the transmission
distance by 10-100 km depending on the amplifier gain and
fiber loss.Can also be employed in a Local Area Network as a
booster amplifier to compensate for coupler-insertion loss and
Optical Amplifiers Applications
 Basic operation a generic optical
amplifier

Here, the device absorbs energy supplied from an external source

called pump.The pump supplies energy to electrons in an active
medium, which raises them to higher energy levels to produce a
An population inversion.
incoming signal photon will trigger these excited electrons to drop
to lower levels through a stimulated-emission process.Since one
incoming trigger photon stimulates many excited electrons to emit
photons of equal energy as they drop to the ground state, the
result is an amplified optical signal.In Raman Amplification,
there is a transfer of optical power from a high-power pump
wavelength to information signals at longer wavelengths.This
amplification mechanism is done without the need for a
population-inversion process.
 Optical Amplifiers types
There are mainly four approaches to optical amplification,
• Semiconductor amplifier Optical
• Erbium-doped fiber amplifier Communication
• Raman amplifier Spectrum Bands
• Wideband optical amplifier
Optical Communication Spectrum
Bands
Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA)
• A semiconductor optical amplifier is essentially an
InGaAsP laser that is operating below its threshold point.

• Analogous to the construction of laser diode, the gain

peak of an SOA can be selected in any narrow wavelength
band extending from 1280 nm in the O-band to 1650 nm
in the U-band by varying the composition of the active
InGaAsP material.

• SOA belong to travelling-wave (TW) amplifier category.

• This means that in contrast to the laser feedback

mechanism where the optical signal makes many
passes through the lasing cavity, in the SOA, the
optical signal travels through the device only once.

• During this single passage the signal gains energy and

Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA)

• R1, R2 – Input & output facet reflectivities

• w, d & L – Active region width, thickness & length

respectively
 SOA Characteristics
Alloys of semiconductor materials from groups III and V (e.g.
phosphorous, gallium, indium, and arsenic) make up the active
medium in SOAs.The device can be made to work in the O-band
(around 1310 nm) as well as in the C-band.They can be integrated
easily on the same substrate as the other optical devices and
circuits (e.g. couplers, optical isolators, and receiver
circuits)Compared with DFAs, they consume less electrical power,
have fewer components, and are more compact.SOAs have a more
rapid gain response, which is on the order of 1 to 100 ps.

The advantage is that SOAs can be implemented when both switching

and signal-processing functions are called for in optical
networks.The limitation is that the rapid carrier response causes
the gain at a particular wavelength to fluctuate with the signal rate
for speeds upto several Gb/s.Since this fluctuations affects the
overall gain, the signal gain at other wavelengths also
fluctuates.Thus the rapid gain response gives rise to crosstalk
effects when a broad spectrum of wavelengths must be amplified.
 Doped Fiber Amplifiers (DFAs)
The important features of DFAs include:
The ability to pump the devices at several different wavelengths
Low coupling loss to the compatible-sized fiber transmission
medium
In Very low dependence
addition, of gaintransparent
DFAs are highly to signal. format and bit
on light polarization
rate, since they exhibit slow gain dynamics, with carrier lifetimes
on the order of 0.1-10 ms.The result is that, in contrast to SOAs,
the gain responses of DFAs are basically constant for signal
modulations greater than a few kilohertz.
Consequently, they are immune from interference effects (such as
crosstalk and intermodulation distortion) between different
optical channels when wavelength channels in a broad spectrum
(e.g., in a 30-nm spectral band ranging from 1530 to 1560 nm)
are injected simultaneously into the amplifier.
 Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers
• The active medium (EDFAs) … amplifier consists of
in an optical fiber
a nominally 10- to 30-nm length of optical fiber that has
been lightly doped (e.g., 1000 parts per million (ppm)
weight) with a rare-earth element.

• The host fiber material can be standard silica, a fluoride-

based glass, or a tellurite glass.

• The operating regions of these devices depend on the

host material and the doping elements.

• A popular material for long-haul telecommunication

applications is a silica fiber doped with erbium, which is
known as an erbium-doped fiber amplifier or EDFA.

• In some cases Yb is added to increase the pumping

efficiency and the amplifier gain.
 Amplification Mechanism of EDFAs
Whereas semiconductor optical amplifiers use external current
injection to excite electrons to higher energy levels, optical fiber
amplifiers use optical pumping.
In this process, one uses photons to directly raise electrons into
excited states.The optical pumping process requires the use of
three energy levels. The top energy level to which the electron is
elevated must lie energetically above the desired lasing level.
After reaching its excited state, the electron must release some of its
energy and drop to the desired lasing level.
From this level, a signal photon can then trigger the excited electron
into stimulated emission, whereby the electron releases its
remaining energy in the form of a new photon with a wavelength
identical to that of the signal photon.Since the pump photon must
have a higher energy than the signal photon, the pump
wavelength is shorter than the signal wavelength.
Amplification Mechanism of EDFAs …
The two principal levels for
telecommunication
applications are a metastable
level (the so-called 4I13/2 level)
and 4I11/2 pump level.The term
“metastable” means that the
lifetimes for transition from
this state to the ground state
are very long compared with
the lifetimes of the states that
lead to this level.
 Energy Level:
The pump band shown in the top left of the figure exists at a 1.27-eV separation
from the bottom of the 4I15/2 ground state.
This energy corresponds to a 980-nm wavelength
The top of the 4I13/2 metastable band (level D in figure) is separated from the bottom
of the 4I15/2 ground state band (level A in fig) by 0.841 eV.This energy
corresponds to a 1480-nm wavelength.
The bottom of the 4I13/2 metastable band (level C in figure) is separated from the
bottom of the 4I15/2 ground state band (level A in figure) by 0.814 eV.This
energy corresponds to a 1530-nm wavelength.
The bottom of the 4I13/2 metastable band (level C in figure) is separated from the top
of the 4I15/2 ground state band (level B in figure) by 0.775 eV.This energy
corresponds to a 1600-nm wavelength

This means that possible pump wavelengths are 980 and 1480 nm.
The photons emitted during transitions of electrons between possible energy levels in
the metastable and ground-state bands can range from 1530 to 1600 nm.
Transition Process:
In normal operation, a pump laser emitting 980-nm photons is used to excite ions from
the ground state to the pump level as shown by the transition process 1 in figure.
These excited ions decay (relax) very quickly (in about 1 µs) from the pump band to
the metastable band, shown as transition process 2.During this decay, the excess
energy is released as photons or, equivalently, mechanical vibrations in the fiber.
Another possible pump wavelength is 1480 nm. The energy of these pump photons is
very similar to the signal-photon energy, but slightly higher.The absorption of a
1480-nm pump photon excites an electron from the ground state directly to the
lightly populated top of the metastable level, as indicated by the transition process
3.These electrons then tend to move down to the more populated lower end of the
metastable level (transition process 4).Some of the ions sitting at the metastable
level can decay back to the ground state in the absence of an extremely stimulating
photon flux, as shown by transition process 5.This decay phenomenon is known as
spontaneous emission and adds to the amplifier noise.
• Two more types of transition occurs when a flux of signal photons
that have energies corresponding to the band-gap energy between the
ground state and metastable level passes through the device.

• First, a small portion of the external photons will be absorbed by

ions in the ground state, which raises these ions to the metastable
level, as shown by the transition process 6.

• Second, in the stimulated emission process (transition process

7) a signal photon triggers an excited ion to drop to the ground
state, there by emitting a new photon of the same energy, wave
vector, and polarization as the incoming signal photon.

• The widths of the metastable and ground-state levels allow high

levels of stimulated emissions to occur in the 1530-to-1560-nm
range.
 EDFA Architecture
• An optical fiber amplifier consists of a doped fiber, one or more
pump lasers, a passive wavelength coupler, optical isolators, and
tap couplers, as shown in the figure.

• The dichroic (two-wavelength) coupler handles either 980/1550-

nm or 1480/1550-nm wavelength combinations to couple both the
pump and signal optical power efficiently into the fiber amplifier.

• The tap couplers are wavelength-insensitive with typical splitting

ratios ranging from 99:1 to 95:5.

 They are generally used on both sides of the amplifier to compare

the incoming signal with the amplified output.

• The optical isolators prevent the amplified signal from reflecting

back into the device, where it could increase the amplifier noise and
decrease the amplifier efficiency.
 EDFA Configurations:
(a) Co-directional pumping, (b) Counter directional pumping, (c) Dual
pumping
 EDFA Architecture …
• Injecting the pump light from the same direction as the signal
flow is known as co-directional pumping.

• It is also possible to inject pump in the opposite direction to the

signal flow, which is known as counter-directional pumping.

• As shown in the figure, one can employ either a single pump

source or use a dual-pump schemes, with the resultant gains
typically being +17dB and +35dB respectively.

• Counter-directional pumping allows higher gains, but co-

directional pumping gives better noise performance.

• In addition, pumping at 980 nm is preferred, since it produces

less noise and achieves larger population inversions than
pumping at 1480 nm.
 Raman Amplifier
A Raman Optical Amplifier is based on a nonlinear effect called stimulated Raman
scattering (SRS), which occurs in fibers at high optical powers.The SRS effect
is due to an interaction between an optical energy field and the vibrational
modes of the lattice structure in a material.Basically what happens is that an
atom first absorbs a photon at a particular energy and then releases another
photon at a lower energy, that is, at a longer wavelength than that of the
absorbed photon.The energy difference between the absorbed and the released
photons is transformed into a phonon, which is a vibrational mode of the
material.
The power transfer to higher wavelengths occurs over a broad
spectral range of 80 to 100 nm.The shift to a particular longer
wavelength is referred to as the Stokes Shift for that
wavelength.Figure shows the Raman gain spectrum for a pump
laser operating at 1445 nm and illustrated the SRS-induced power
transfer to a signal at 1535 nm, which is 90-nm away from the
pump wavelength.
 Setup of a typical
Raman Amplification System
 Raman Amplifier …
Figure shows the setup of a typical Raman amplification
system.Here a pump combiner multiplexes the outputs
from four pump lasers operating at different
wavelengths(1425, 1465 and 1485 nm) onto a single
fiber.These pump-power couplers are referred to
popularly as 14XX-nm pump-pump combiners.
This combined pump power then is coupled into the
transmission fiber in a counter-propagating direction
through a broadband WDM coupler.The differences in
the power levels measured between the two monitoring
photodiodes as shown in fig, gives the amplification
gain.The Gain-Flattening Filter (GFF) is used to equalize
the gains at different wavelengths.
 Brillouim Amplifier
Nonlinear effect due to Brillouin Scattering is employed to
provide optical amplification in Brillouin Amplifier.
Stimulated Brillouin Scattering is a very efficient nonlinear
amplification mechanism that can provide high gain at
modest optical pump powers of around 1 mW.However
it results from the scattering process in which the pump
wavelength is often only around 20 GHz distance from
the frequency of the optical signal to be amplified.
Moreover, it is a narrow band process and the gain-
bandwidth may only be in the range 15 to 20 MHz in
silica fibers at wavelength of 1.5 µm.
The limitation on the spectral bandwidth in a pure silica
fiber is around 50 MHz which fundamentally restricts
the use of Brillouin amplifiers to relatively low speed
communications.A very precise frequency difference of
around 11 GHz must be maintained between the optical
pump and the signal to ensure that the Brillouin
scattering phenomenon continues at full strength.
 Brillouim Amplifier …
This amplifier type is therefore perceived to have a rather
restricted range of applications.However, the
narrowband process could be useful in the provision of
tunable filters within WDM systems.It can provide
channel selection by allowing amplification of a
particular channel without boosting other nearby
channels.
 Brillouim Amplification
• The method includes injecting pump light with a well-defined
frequency into the far end of the glass fiber so that it travels in
the opposite direction of the signal light, thus generating
sound waves (acoustic phonons).

• The sound waves then scatter the pump light, enabling the
existing signal photons to stimulate the emission of many
more signal photons.

• Thus, a photon avalanche is created – and kept going by the

sound waves – bringing the frequency information to the
remote end of the optical fiber with extremely small losses and
very high precision.
 WIDEBAND OPTICAL AMPLIFIERS
Te ever growing for more bandwidth created an interest in developing wideband
optical amplifier that operate over spectral wavelength bands to handle a large
number of WDM channels simultaneously.. Fig a: Representation of two
different band optical amplifiers in parallelThe parallel design a wideband
Demultiplexer splits the incoming signal spectrum into two wavelength
bands..The two bands then pass through corresponding optical amplifiers after
which a wideband multiplexer recombines the two spectral bands..
 This setup requires the use of a guard band spanning several nanometres between the two spectral regions.This guard band
prevents amplification overlap between the different paths and prevents noise power originating in one amplifier from
interfering with signal amplification in an adjacent amplifier.Fig b: Representation of two different band optical
amplifiers in seriesThe series configuration is known as a seamless wideband optical amplifier because it does not
require splitting the signal into separate paths..

It also avoids the noise figure degradations of wavelength couplers and the

additional costs of the couplers themselves..These amplifiers can be constructed

either from a concatenation of two or more doped-fiber amplifiers or from a

combination of a fiber amplifier and Raman amplifier..

 Transmission Formats and Speeds
SONET/SDH
SONET Frame
Synchronous optical networks and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy is relate to optical transmission lines and optical networks..This is two-dimensional structure consisting
of 90 columns by 9 rows of byte..Here , in standard SONET terminology, a section connects adjacent pieces of equipment, a line is a longer link that connects two
SONET devices and a path is a complete end-to-end connection..The fundamental frame has a 125-μs duration.The transmission bit rate of the basic SONET signal
is,

STS-1 = (90 bytes/row)(9 rows /frame)(8 bits/byte)/ (125- μs /frame)= 51.84 Mb/s

This is called an STS-1 signal , where STS stands for synchronous transport
signal..When STS-N signal is used to modulate an optical source.The logical STS-N
signal is first scrambled to avoid long strings of ones and zeros and to allow easier
clock recovery at the receiver..After undergoing electrical-to-optical conversion, the
resultant physical-layer optical signal is called OC-N (optical carrier)..It is N ranging
between 1 and 768..
• The first 3-columns comprise transport overhead bytes that
carry network management information..
• The remaining field of 87 columns is called the synchronous
payload (SPE) and carries user data plus 9-bytes of path
overhead(POH)..
• The POH supports performance monitoring by the end
equipment , status, signal labelling, tracing function and user
channel..
• The 9-path overhead bytes are always in a column and can be
located anywhere in the SPE..
SDH frame
• In SDH the basic bit rate is equivalent to STS-3 or 155.52
Mb/s..
• This is called the synchronous transport module-level1
(STM-1)..
• High data rates are designed by STM-M.

• Values of M supported by the ITU-T recommendations are

M=1,4,16 and 64..
• STM-N frame has a 125- μs duration and consists of 9-rows ,
each of which has a length of 270*N bytes..
SONET/SDH Rings
 It is two –fiber unidirectional path-switched ring network..
unidirectional ring the normal working traffic travels clockwise around the ring,
on the primary path..For example, the connection from node 1 to node 3
uses link 1 and 2, whereas the traffic from node 3 to node 1 traverse link 3
and 4..unidirectional ring the counter clockwise path is used as an alternate
route for protection against link or node failures..This protection path (using
links 5 through 8) is indicated by dashed lines..protection path on which
traffic flows counter clockwise from node 1 to node 3 via links 5 and 6..

The receiver normally selects the signal from the primary path..It continuously
compares the fidelity of each signal and choose the alternate signal in case of several
degradation or loss of the primary signal..Thus each path is individually switched based
on the quality of the received signal..For example, if path 2 breaks or equipment in
node 2 fails, then node 3 will switch to the protection channel to receive signals from
node 1...
 SONET/SDH Networks
SONET/SDH network is consisting of point-to-point link , ,linear chains,
unidirectional path switched rings(UPSR) , Bidirectional path switched
rings(BPSR) , and interconnected rings..The OC-192 four-fiber BLSR
could be a large national backbone network with a number of OC-48 rings
attached in different cities..The OC-48 rings can have lower-capacity
localized OC-12 or OC-3 ring or chains attached to them..

Thereby providing the possibility of attaching equipment that has an extremely

wide range of rates and size..Each of the individual ring has its own failure-
recovery mechanism and SONET/SDH network management procedures..
Electronic add/drop multiplexer for SONET/SDH Network:
• Here, various OC-12s AND oc-3s are multiplexed into an OC-
48 stream.
• Upon entering an ADM, these sub channel can be individually
dropped by the ADM (add/drop multiplexer) and others can be
added..
• For example, one OC-12 and two OC-3 channels enter the
left-most ADM as part of an OC-48 channel..
The OC-12 is passed through and the two OC-3s are dropped by the first ADM.Then
two or more OC-12 s and ONE oc-3 are multiplexed together with the OC-12
channel that is passing through and the aggregate OC-48 is sent to another ADM
node downstream.
SONET/SDH architecture can also be implemented with multiple wavelengths..A
dense WDM deployment on an OC-192 trunk ring for n wavelength..The different
wavelength outputs from each OC-192 transmitter are passed first through a variable
attenuator to equalize the output powers.These are then fed into a wavelength
multiplexer, possibly amplified by a post-transmitter optical amplifier and send out
over the transmission fiber.Additional optical amplifiers might be located at
intermediate points and/or at the receiving end..