Noise and Saturation Properties of Fiber Optical
Doktorsavhandling, 2006
Fiber Optical Parametric Amplifiers (FOPAs) are based on a highly efficient Four-wave Mixing process in highly nonlinear
fibers and have gained a lot of interest since it was shown that a
high gain can be obtained. They are multi-functional devices that
are not only limited to amplifying signals, but their wide range of
applicability also include wavelength conversion, pulse-generation,
optical sampling and also regeneration at very high bit-rates. The
foremost property that makes this amplifier unique is its very fast
response time, which make the signal gain respond to any change in
pump power almost instantaneously.
The FOPA was long thought of as an ideal amplifier in terms of noise
performance. We show, however, that the noise around the pump itself
is transferred to the signal. The fast response time makes this
source of noise particularly large compared with other amplifiers
exhibiting similar properties. This leads to stringent requirements
on the laser. In this thesis we have developed a theory for the
noise figure of FOPAs, both in single-pumped and dual-pumped
implementations and show very good agreement with experimental
measurements.
Furthermore, in order to launch the pump powers necessary for high
gain, the pump sources need to be phase-modulated in order to reduce
the effects of stimulated Brillouin scattering. This may introduce
intensity fluctuations on to the signal and may therefore affect the
amplifiers performance. We quantify this effects and also derive
theory of how it affects the bit-error rate (BER) in digital data.
It is shown that its effect on the BER is much lower then previously
expected.
Also, optical signal regeneration is based on a nonlinear
relationship between the input and output optical power. FOPAs
exhibit such a relationship when operated in the saturated gain
regime. We simplify previous gain saturation theories and present
experimental measurements proving our theory. A simplified
expression is useful in the development of regenerators and in the
design of multi-wavelength amplification, where cross gain
saturation may affect the amplifier performance.
nonlinear fiber optics
four-wave mixing
single-pumped
regeneration
saturation
dual-pumped
noise figure
parametric amplification