Abstract

An important application of Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers is in future wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) communication systems. In such systems one needs to consider gain cross saturation, i.e., how a signal at one wavelength affects gains at other wavelengths. A contributing factor to gain cross saturation is the inhomogeneous broadening of the gain medium. In this paper we demonstrate a technique for characterizing the inhomogeneous nature of the small-signal gain spectrum in the presence of a saturating signal.

© 1995 Optical Society of America