Abstract

Two methods for optical-fiber-amplifier (OFA) noise-figure (NF) measurement are (a) an optical technique in which the NF is deduced from measurements of the amplified-spontaneous-emission (ASE) power spectral density at the signal wavelength and from the gain¹ and (b) an electrical technique in which the NF is determined directly from measured noise current density.² This paper demonstrates that an electrical NF specification is needed for guaranteeing acceptable amplitude-modulation–vestigial-sideband (AM-VSB) performance; however, an optical NF specification may be sufficient for some digital applications if the effective reflectances of internal components on each side of the doped fiber are much less than (–14 – Gain) dB.

© 1995 Optical Society of America