Novel pumping scheme of Holmium doped fiber amplifiers operating around 2μm using 1.

The optical communication window around 2μm is attracting significant research attention for future optical communication systems as an extension to the C-, L-, and U-bands. One of the research topics in the 2μm region is optical amplifiers. Holmium-doped fiber amplifier (HDFA) is a suitable candidate for amplifying signals in this region. However, the pump laser for Holmium-doped fiber (HDF) is expensive and not widely available. In this work, we propose through numerical simulations, a novel pumping scheme to pump the HDF using commercially available 1.48μm lasers by exploiting cascaded fiber lasers made up of Erbium-doped fiber (EDF) and Thulium-doped fiber (TDF). The first fiber uses a commercially available 1.48μm laser to pump a piece of EDF to generate a 1.62μm continuous wave (CW) laser. This 1.62μm CW laser is used to pump a piece of TDF in the second fiber laser to create a 1.95μm CW laser that is used to pump the HDF. The HDFA can be used to amplify modulated optical signals in the 2μm wavelength range. A small-signal gain of 52.5 dB, 46.2 dB, and 32.6 dB can be achieved for input signal powers of −30 dBm, −15 dBm, and 0 dBm, respectively, at 2.032μm using a 5 W laser diode pump at 1.48μm. A noise figure (NF) of 7.5 dB, 6.6 dB, and 5.58 dB has been observed for input signal power of −30 dBm, −15 dBm, and 0 dBm, respectively at 2.032μm.