Mitigation of EDFA transient effects in variable duty cycle pulsed signals

Abstract

We report the transient effects in Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) systems for pulsed signals with different duty-cycles. The work includes the analysis using three different duty-cycles, 10%, 20% and 50%. A curve fitting technique is also proposed to predict the transients of any lesser duty-cycled pulse, once the transients of a larger duty-cycled pulse is known. Mathematical evaluation confirms the double exponential shape of transient distorted signal. Further, EDFA transient effect is experimentally verified on a Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) link by multiplexing high and low bitrate modulated optical signals. We conclude the paper by proposing a transient suppression technique for variable duty-cycle signals and analyzing its effectiveness with different wavelength spacing. Keywords: EDFA, Transients, WDM, Variable duty cycle, Suppression