Wide-band Bismuth based erbium doped fiber amplifier for DWDM applications

We demonstrate a bismuth based erbium doped fiber amplifier (Bi-EDFA) which operates in both C and L band wavelength region. The system employs two pieces of bismuth based erbium doped fiber (Bi-EDF) as the gain medium with a midway broadband fiber Bragg grating (FBG). At input signal power of -30 dBm and pump power of 150 mW for both pumps, a flat-gain of around 29 dB is obtained with gain variation of ± 3.5 dB within the wavelength region from 1525 to 1615 nm using a backward pumping scheme. At input power of 0 dBm, the gain varies from 10 to 13 dB within the wavelength range from 1530 to 1620 nm. The corresponding noise figure varies from 9.5 to 14 dB within this wavelength range.