Abstract
Raman amplification has emerged as a useful tool in extending the span lengths and the capacity of a transmission system.1 An advantage of Raman amplification is that a broad flat gain can be achieved by using pumps at several wavelengths.2,3 This eliminates the need for expensive and loss inducing gain flattening filters. To date, sources used as pumps for Raman amplification have multiplexed several single wavelength semiconductor laser diodes or cascaded Raman fiber lasers together.2–3 This approach requires a large number of lasers. In the case of semiconductor lasers, pairs of lasers with orthogonal polarization at a given wavelength are used. This leads to additional costs, and places wavelength and polarization limitations on the diodes. Since a Raman fiber laser is capable of producing a large amount of power it is advantageous to turn the large amount of power available at a single wavelength into a multiple wavelength source.4–9
© 2002 Optical Society of America
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