Cladding-Pumped Erbium/Ytterbium Co-Doped Fiber Amplifier for C-Band Operation in Optical Networks

Space-division multiplexing (SDM) attracts attention to cladding-pumped optical amplifiers, but they suffer from a low pump power conversion efficiency. To address this issue, ytterbium (Yb3+) and erbium (Er3+) co-doping is considered as an effective approach. However, it changes the gain profile of Er3+-doped fiber amplifiers and induces the gain difference between optical wavelengths in the C-band, significantly limiting the effective band of the dense wavelength-division multiplexed (DWDM) system. This paper is devoted to a detailed study of a cladding-pumped Er3+/Yb3+ co-doped fiber amplifier (EYDFA) through numerical simulations aiming to identify a configuration, before assembling a s…