IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 4, NO.

5 , MAY 1992 449

Analytical Gain Equation for Erbium-Doped

Fiber Amplifiers Including Mode Field
Profiles and Dopant Distribution
Th. Pfeiffer and H. Bulow

Abstract-We propose an analytical description of the gain of Here u j indicates the direction of propagation of the pump
an erbium-doped fiber amplifier that takes into account the +
( j = p ) and signal wave ( j = s): u j = 1 for positive z-di-
transverse extension of mode fields and dopant distribution. A rection, U, = - 1 for negative z-direction. r is the upper
single closed-form expression is derived that describes the rela-
tion between gain, input powers, and fiber length. The free level spontaneous lifetime, hv, the photon energy. The am-
parameters in this equation are given in their analytical form. A plification or attentuation of the local intensity zk(k = p , s)
numerical evaluation of the equation is performed for a 980 nm is given by
pumped amplifier fiber with different doping radii. A compari-
son with a calculation using the full numerical integration of
differential equations shows that our description is correct for ak' = U k z k ( N2( Uim
-
az
+ 0;") - Nulbs) (2)
conventional fiber geometries.
with the emission and absorption cross section U;"' and aibs,
respectively. We used the fact that the lower level population
INTRODUCTION N I is related to the local erbium concentration N by N, =
HERE has been a great effort during the last years to N - N 2 . The amplification of the spontaneous emission is
T accurately model the gain in erbium-doped fiber ampli- not included in this approach.
fiers (EDFA's) [l], [2]. But yet no complete analytical Before proceeding to the integration over the coordinate z ,
expression has been given that describes the gain in closed (2) must be integrated over the fiber cross section. However,
form in terms of input powers and fiber length. One major if we insert N2 from (1) into ( 2 ) , the explicit dependence on
difficulty in an accurate mathematical description is imposed the erbium distribution is lost in the first term in brackets of
by the transverse properties of the amplifier fiber, i.e., mode (2). Instead, we replace the intensities in this term by the
field profiles and erbium distribution. In this letter we adopt respective mode powers P . The contribution of the trans-
an approach that has been proposed by Saleh et al. [3] for verse integration is accounted for by an overlap factor Ckj
the propagation of pump and signal wave in the doped fiber. which will be determined afterwards. Equation ( 2 ) then re-
We give formulas for the calculation of the small signal sults in
absorption coefficients and of the saturation powers that are
valid for realistic fiber geometries for 980 nm and for 1480
nm pumped EDFA's. With these parameters an analytical
gain equation is derived that is applicable to medium gain with the small signal absorption coefficient
amplifiers that are not saturated by the amplified spontaneous
emission (ASE), e.g., booster amplifiers.
OF GAINEQUATION
DERIVATION
For pump wavelengths that are free from excited state
absorption (ESA), e.g., 980 and 1480 nm, the propagation of and the saturation intensity
pump and signal waves is described by a set of equations that
only take into account the population of the upper laser level
eZl,,2) and the lower laser level ~Z,,,,) of the erbium ions.
+,
In equilibrium the local population N 2 ( r , z ) of the upper
level is related to the change of the local intensity Zj(r, +, z ) The local intensity has been expressed as Zk =
of pump and signal [3] by P kf k / 1
f,dA with f k ( r , 4) being the power mode field
function. Integration of (3) from z = 0 to z = L yields
N2 -- - r E
1
u.-L
ar.
j = p , s 'hv, a z

Manuscript received October 14, 1991; revised January 29, 1992.

The authors are with Alcatel SEL Research Centre, D-7000Stuttgart 31, (6)
Germany.
IEEE Log Number 9107987. In general the coefficients Ckj are power dependent [4], but

1041-1135/92$03.00 0 1992 IEEE

450 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 4 , NO. 5, MAY 1992

for sufficiently high powers or for a confined erbium doping This reduces to P i = (A, / A p ) P y a sL in most cases where
they may be set constant. Their values are determined by the G,, > 30 dB and 6 of the order of 0.5 to 2.
following consideration for only one pump and signal wave-
length, respectively. For very high pump power and negligi- EXAMPLE
NUMERICAL
ble signal power we can deduce from (2) that the upper level For practical applications the free parameters in (10) must
+
population approaches N2 = Nu~hs/(upabs aim), indepen- be determined experimentally as described in [3]. They may,
dent of the local coordinates r , 4, z . The absorbed pump however, also be calculated using (4) and (9). In this section
power is then we show a comparison between a gain calculation for a 980
nm pumped EDFA based on (10) and a calculation that uses
the full numerical integration of differential equations over
the fiber cross section and fiber length, as described in [l].
We calculate the gain/pump power characteristic for a
The gain in this case is the maximum achievable gain and is
step-index fiber with Gaussian mode fields and different
determined by integrating (2) over the signal mode field
doping radii to show the range of validity of the above
transverse integration. The fiber data are: index radius a =
1.4 pm, NA = 0.26, the mode field radius is determined
using the expression given by Marcuse [5]. Further data are
A, = 980 nm, A, = 1550 nm, u;hs = 2 . cm', up"" =
Similar expressions are deduced for the absorbed signal = 2 * IO^" cm2, = 3 . lop2' cm2 [2], 7 = 10
0,
power at high input power and for the transmission factor at ms. The erbium concentration is N = 1.5 . 10l8 ~ m - con- ~ ,
the pump wavelength for negligible pump power. The com- stant within the radius R , = a, 1.7a, respectively. The fiber
parison with the corresponding expressions derived from (6) length is different in both cases to achieve comparable gains
yields C k j / I p t= 1/Pp' with ( L = 30 m, 15 m). The signal input power is -30 and 0
dBm, corresponding to small signal and large signal amplifi-
J' NdAJ' f k d A cation. The result of our comparison (Fig. 1) between the
eat = Ti
.I'NfkdA .
(9) two approaches is that (10) gives correct values for the gain
even for 980 nm pumping, provided that either the doping
radius does not exceed the pump mode field radius or that the
Writing down (6) explicitly for the pump ( k = p ) and for the powers (pump and/or signal) are sufficiently large. For R ,
signal wave ( k = s) one can isolate the output pump power = a (curves labeled 1) the maximum calculated gain differ-
PFt and the absorbed pump power Pp - PFt from the ence between the two calculations is less than 0.5 dB for the
signal equation and insert them into the pump equation. After small signal gain. For higher signal powers (0 dBm) or for
some modification we get, using the signal gain G = more confined doping geometry (e.g., R , = 0.3 * a, L =
P y ,/ Pi", 200 m; not shown in Fig. 1) the difference could not even be
resolved on the scale of Fig. 1. For larger doping diameter
( R , = 1.7 . a, curves labeled 2) the discrepancy increases,
specially for low powers. In this case the above approxima-
tion is no longer valid. For realistic fibers, however, with
Psi"
+-(G - 1 ) (10) doping radius equal to the index radius or less and cutoff
hv, wavelength below the pump wavelength, our approach gives
with the maximum gain reliable results.

G",, = exp{ ($ - as)L ]

and the ratio of saturation powers
The term on the left-hand side of (10) represents the number
of absorbed pump photons per unit time and the terms on the
right-hand side correspond to the rate of spontaneously emit-
ted photons and to the number of photons added to the signal
per unit time, respectively. The transparency pump power for
G = 1 is calculated as
DISCUSSION
Some comments should be made about the validity of (10).
First the neglect of the ASE limits its applicability to medium
gains of about 20 dB or to high signal input powers of
> -20 dBm [3]. These are values that are met, e.g., in
booster amplifiers for CATV applications or in erbium-fiber
lasers. Secondly, no additional losses are included in the
analysis. These might be due to Rayleigh scattering which is
of special importance in distributed amplifiers [6], or excited
state absorption either from the upper laser level for A, = 800
nm or from the pump level for higher pump powers at
hp = 980 nm [7]. The great advantage of (10) is that many
situations of practical interest can be easily calculated, if the
parameters a p , s and Pia: are known. Beside this, some
general features of EDFA's can be discussed. There exists a
maximum gain G,,, [see (8) and (1 l)] that is only reached
IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 4, NO. 5 , MAY 1992 45 I

30 I 1
determines mainly via Pjy;,for which powers this region of
:P = -30 dBm 1 operation is entered.

CONCLUSION
We derived a closed-form analytical expression that de-
scribes the gain of EDFA’s in terms of input powers and
fiber length. The free parameters are calculated from the
5 fiber geometry. This analysis applies preferably to high power
Pp = 0 dBm
amplifiers.

REFERENCES
I I I I I I I I
[I] E. Desurvire, J. L. Zyskind, and C. R. Giles, “Design optimization
‘“0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 for efficient erbium doped fiber amplifiers,” J. Lightwave Technol.,
vol. 8, pp. 1730-1741, 1990.
Pump Power, mW [2] B. Pedersen, A. Bjarklev, 1. H. Povlsen, K. Dybdal, and C. C.
Fig. 1. Gain at 1550 nm for 980 nm pumping using (10) (solid lines) and Larsen, “The design of erbiumdoped fiber amplifiers,” J. Light-
full model [l] (dashed lines). Signal input powers are -30 and 0 dBm. wave Technol., vol. 9, pp. 1105-1112, 1991.
Label “1” for R , = a, L = 30 m; label “2” for R, = 1.7a, L = 15 rn. [3] A. A. M. Saleh, R. M. Jopson, J. D. Evankow, and H. Aspell,
“Modeling of gain in erbium doped fiber amplifiers,” IEEE Photon.
Technol. Lett., vol. 2, pp. 714-717, 1990.
[4] C. R. Giles and E. Desurvire, “Modeling erbium doped fiber ampli-
fiers,” J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 9, pp. 271-283, 1991.
for arbitrarily high pump powers. For a given pump power [5] D. Marcuse, “Loss analysis of single-mode fiber splices,” Bell Syst.
the gain decreases with increasing signal power and the Tech. J . , vol. 56, pp. 703-718, 1977.
spontaneously emitted power also decreases. So for high [6] E. Desurvire and D.Chen, “Accurate modeling of distributed erbium
signal powers the gain approaches G = 1 ApPF/AsP: + doped fiber amplifiers with bidirectional pump,” in Proc. 2nd Top.
Meet. Opt. Amplifiers Appl., Snowmass Village, CO, 1991, pp.
and becomes nearly independent of the signal wavelength. 152- 155.
The quantum efficiency 7 = AsP,””‘/(ApP~ ASP:) ap- + [7] M. G. Sceats, P. A. Krug, G. R. Atkins, S. C. Guy, and S. B. Poole,
“Nonlinear excited state absorption in Er3+ doped fiber with high
proaches unity in this case, independent of the signal wave- power 980 nm pumping,” in Proc. 2nd Top. Meet. Opt. Amplijers
length and of the fiber design. The fiber geometry, however, Appl., Snowmass Village, CO, 1991. DD. 48-51.

Deterministic, Analytically Complete

Measurement of Polarization-
Dependent Transmission
Through Optical
Devices
B. L. Heffner

Abstract-Polarization dependence of the loss or gain of an
optical device has been difficult to measure in a consistent and
reproducible manner because it has been necessary to search for
the extrema of transmission over a two-dimensional polarization
space. It is shown for the first time that the global variation of
the transmission through any linear, time-invariant optical de-
vice, over all states of polarization, can be found in a strictly
deterministic, analytically complete manner by measuring the
polarization responses to only three input polarizations. A series
of fast, automated measurements of two test devices yielded
standard deviations of 0.017 and 0.033 dB, and agreement with
laborious manual measurements.
INTRODUCTION

Manuscript received January 17, 1992.

The author is with the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA
94303.
A CCURATE, thorough characterization of optical de-
vices is becoming increasingly important as optical sys-
tems become more complex and incorporate a wide variety of
IEEE Log Number 9107986. devices in ever larger numbers. One of the fundamental

1041-1135/92$03.00 0 1992 IEEE