High-gain integrated in-line few-mode amplifier enabling 3840-km long-haul transmission

An integrated few-mode erbium-doped fiber amplifier (FM-EDFA) with high modal gain is suitable for the in-line amplification in mode-division multiplexing transmission (MDM) systems. We first experimentally demonstrate a dual-stage integrated FM-EDFA supporting three linear polarization modes. Consisting of integrated passive components with low insertion losses, the FM-EDFA has a similar structure and performance to widely used commercial single-mode EDFAs. The averaged modal gain of 25 dB, the differential modal gain (DMG) of < 1.1 dB , and noise figures of 5–7 dB are simultaneously achieved. In addition, the DMG of the 3M-EDF itself is ∼ 0.3 dB . Moreover, an MDM transmission experiment with the in-line few-mode amplification by our proposed FM-EDFA over a 3840-km few-mode fiber link for a 28-Gbaud quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signal is demonstrated.