Development of Bi₂O₃- Based erbium-doped fibers

Recent developments of Bismuth-based erbium-doped fibers (Bi-EDFs) have demonstrated their potential applications for broadband amplifiers, particularly for the L-band in DWDM systems, for short pulse amplifiers to be used in very high bit-rate transmission systems (up to 160 Gbps), and for ultra wideband tunable fiber ring lasers. The low concentration quenching of erbium ions in Bi-based glass permits efficient high erbium concentration Bi-EDFs (up to 26,000 ppm) to be fabricated allowing the realization of ultra-short length erbium-doped fibre amplifiers and fiber lasers. In this paper, we reported the performance of two Bi-EDFs with different erbium ions concentrations for signal amplification. One fiber was doped with 6,470 wt-ppm of erbium ions and the other was doped with 3,250 wt-ppm of erbium ions. The performance of a 253-cm long Lanthanum co-doped Bi-based EDF (3,250 ppm of erbium) for the amplification of 142 wavelength channels was evaluated. 140 of the input signals were located at the 50-GHz ITU grid. Signal gains of over 20 dB and NF less than 6.7 dB were measured for all the channels with wavelengths ranging from 1554.13 nm to 1612.22 nm (i.e. over 58 nm). 3-dB bandwidth of 53.9 nm and quantum conversion efficiency of about 60% were attained when the fiber was pumped with 350 mW and 623 mW of pump power, respectively. The performance of an ultra-short length Bi-EDFA, using 23-cm of Bi-EDF doped with 6,500 ppm of erbium ions pumped at 980 nm, for the amplification of picosecond pulses will be discussed. The results of an ultra wideband (106 nm) tunable fiber ring laser based on the higher erbium concentration Bi-EDF will also be presented.