Fibre Optic Parametric Amplifiers For Transient Limited Optical Fibre Systems

Abstract

The thesis explores fibre optical parametric amplifiers (FOPAs) to implement and develop the FOPA ability to provide transient free burst mode signal amplification, presenting potential applications in reach extended access networks and time-varying optical transmission systems. This document experimentally demonstrates FOPA as a potential drop-in amplifier candidate for transient limited optical systems by experimentally investigating and comparing transient effects in conventional fibre amplifiers. For example, future reach extended optical access networks. Additionally, this work provides evidence for transient free burst traffic amplification enabled by FOPA. A number of experimental techniques were implemented to demonstrate an ultra- fast response, high burst signal gain, and the ability to simultaneously amplify bi- directionally transmitted signals in a dual telecom band. Novel polarisation-insensitive FOPA employed in a 50 km reach extended access network link to achieve clean burst mode signal amplification. PI-FOPA targeted varied burst durations and burst traffic density amplification to evaluate performance compared to a commercial erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) and a discrete Raman amplifier. FOPA enhances link receiver sensitivity by >3 dB compared to EDFA and Raman amplifier for a varied burst duration amplification from 70 µs to 5 µs. For high burst traffic density amplification from 5% to 97%, FOPA allows burst traffic amplification up to 97% traffic, while EDFA and discrete Raman amplifier traffic density amplification was limited to 15% and 30%. We first presented a bi-directional non- burst and burst signal amplification by implementing a novel dual-band FOPA setup. FOPA achieved polarisation insensitive net gain of >16 dB for >50 nm apart signals in C and L bands. FOPA's ability to provide a wide broadband gain of ~10THz is utilized to amplify a non-burst and bursty signal in a dual-band transmission with a single in-line PI-FOPA amplifier simultaneously.