Saturation parameters of erbium doped fibre amplifiers

Saturation parameters including gain, input signal power and output power were studied for erbium doped fibre amplifiers (EDFA). Knowledge of these parameters will enable a better design of EDFAs for operation as a power amplifier. In this saturated regime, gain saturation is defined as the gain at 3 dB gain compression from the unsaturated gain for a specific fibre length and pump power. Therefore, the output saturation power, P/sub osat/, and input saturation signal power, P/sub isat/, are defined as the output power and input signal power at which gain saturation occurs. The effects of pump power and fibre length were also studied in this paper.