Investigation of Black Box Model for Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers in Space Radiation Environment

A black box model (BBM) of common environment is introduced to characterize the gain of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) for any wavelength in the range of 1540–1560 nm in the radiation environment. Two erbium-doped fibers with different concentrations have been radiated to confirm the validity of the BBM. Using the method of BBM, the less measured parameters can overcome the restriction of the measured time in radiation environment. Therefore, that affords a new way to characterize the gain deterioration characteristic of EDFA in multiwavelength in radiation environment.

I. Introduction

With the development of several important space optical communication programs which are carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) [1]–[4], many key ground optical communication devices and techniques have been introduced to the field of satellite optical communication. In this way, lots of valuable achievements have been obtained in recent years. In 1995, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, Pasadena, CA) and NICT (formerly CRL, Japan) successfully established an optical communication link between the Japanese ETS-VI satellite and the Table Mountain Facility near the JPL [5]. In 2001, ESA first carried out the transmission of an image at 50 Mb/s for low earth orbit—geostationary earth orbit (LEO-GEO) intersatellite link (ISL) applications [6]. In 2005, the first bidirectional laser communications demonstration between Optical Interorbit Communications Engineering Test Satellite (OICETS, Japan) and Advanced Relay Technology Mission Satellite (ARTEMIS, ESA) was successfully conducted with a return link of 50 Mb/s and a forward link of 2 Mb/s [7].