Optical Fiber Amplifiers and Their Applications

A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2025 | Viewed by 1311

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of All Optical Networks and Modern Communication Networks, Beijing Jiaotong University, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100044, China
Interests: passive and active fiber design; few-mode rare-earth (co-)doped fiber amplifiers (FM-REDFAs); optical fiber transmission; optical fiber sensors; beam mode decomposition

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Optical amplifiers are one of the most important devices for power compensation in long-haul transmission systems and, according to basic amplification principles, they can be divided into three categories: rare-earth doped optical amplifiers, semiconductor optical amplifiers, and nonlinear optical amplifiers. Due to growing demand for the expansion of transmission capacity, optical amplifiers have been developing toward new wavebands and few-mode working states.

The gain, noise figure (NF), and effective waveband are important parameters that determine the signal quality after amplification, and these parameters must be taken into consideration before the manufacturing process. At present, the theory underpinning amplifiers is relatively mature; hence, the parameters of optical amplifiers can be optimized successfully by utilizing theory and modeling.

This Special Issue aims to present original state-of-the-art research articles dealing with optical amplifiers in a broad sense, with special emphasis on their application in long-haul and high-capacity transmission systems. Specifically, papers dealing with different optical amplifiers and their applications, such as few-mode fiber amplifiers, multi-core fiber amplifiers, amplifiers that work in new bands, and optical waveguide amplifiers, are welcome. Researchers are invited to submit their contributions to this Special Issue on topics including, but not limited to:

  • Optical amplifiers that work in new wavebands;
  • Few-mode optical amplifiers;
  • Multi-core optical amplifiers;
  • Semiconductor optical amplifiers;
  • Fiberoptic parametric amplifiers;
  • Rare-earth (co-)doped fiber amplifiers;
  • Optical waveguide amplifiers;
  • Hybrid optical amplifiers;
  • The application of optical amplifiers in different fields.

Dr. Jianshuai Wang
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • rare-earth element-doped fiber amplifiers (RE-DFAs)
  • semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs)
  • fiber optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs)
  • optical waveguide amplifiers (OWAs)
  • (modal) gain
  • noise figure (NF)
  • effective waveband
  • gain flatness
  • pump efficiency
  • differential modal gain (DMG)

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 4233 KiB  
Article
L-Band Erbium-Doped Fiber Optimization and Transmission Investigation
by Kaihua Hu, Li Pei, Jianshuai Wang, Zhouyi Hu, Wenxuan Xu, Long Zhang, Jing Li and Li Zhong
Photonics 2025, 12(5), 480; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics12050480 - 13 May 2025
Viewed by 154
Abstract
The optical spectrum resource in the C-band has been used up due to dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). Because of devices’ compatibility with both the C-band and the L-band, the L-band is a good choice for further capacity expansion. Meanwhile, the mode division [...] Read more.
The optical spectrum resource in the C-band has been used up due to dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). Because of devices’ compatibility with both the C-band and the L-band, the L-band is a good choice for further capacity expansion. Meanwhile, the mode division multiplexing (MDM) method has been applied to increase the number of channels. However, the few-mode erbium-doped fiber amplifier must be redesigned to overcome the power differences among channels. In this work, a few-mode erbium-doped fiber (FM-EDF) is optimized and manufactured. Then, an in-line gain-equalized L-band FM-EDFA is constructed. The experimental results show that the FM-EDFA works well in the wavelength range between 1575 nm and 1610 nm. The minimum differential modal gain (DMG) is 0.54 dB, and the maximum modal gain is 22.22 dB. Due to the excellent performance of the L-band FM-EDFA, a DSP-free transmission scheme in the L-band is demonstrated. The bit error rates (BERs) of each channel are below 1 × 10−5 with a DSP-free receiver. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Fiber Amplifiers and Their Applications)
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11 pages, 1696 KiB  
Article
High-Speed and Cost-Efficient NAND Logic Gate Using a Single SOA-DI Configuration
by Amer Kotb, Antonios Hatziefremidis, Gamal Said and Kyriakos E. Zoiros
Photonics 2024, 11(12), 1182; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics11121182 - 17 Dec 2024
Viewed by 834
Abstract
In this study, we propose a novel design for a NAND gate using a single semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) followed by a delay interferometer (DI). This streamlined configuration significantly reduces complexity and cost compared to conventional methods, which typically require cascading multiple SOA-Mach–Zehnder [...] Read more.
In this study, we propose a novel design for a NAND gate using a single semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) followed by a delay interferometer (DI). This streamlined configuration significantly reduces complexity and cost compared to conventional methods, which typically require cascading multiple SOA-Mach–Zehnder interferometers (SOA-MZIs) for NAND gate implementation. Our approach directly generates the NAND logic output with a single SOA and DI, simplifying the overall design. The gate’s performance is evaluated at 80 Gb/s, achieving a high-quality factor (QF) of 10.75. We also analyze the impact of key parameters to optimize the gate’s functionality. Furthermore, we assess the effect of amplified spontaneous emission on the QF, providing a more comprehensive evaluation of the system’s performance. This research paves the way for more efficient and cost-effective complex optical logic circuit solutions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Fiber Amplifiers and Their Applications)
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