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Yb-Doped Fiber Amplier for Deep-Space Optical Communications

Malcolm W. Wright and George C. Valley, Fellow, OSA
AbstractA custom-developed high-power laser based on a Yb-doped amplier is characterized as a transmitter for deep-space optical communications. The key requirements are high peak power at moderate data rates with good beam quality. The transient pulse dynamics are modeled via a simple rate equation approach and reveal a qualitative agreement with the pulsed performance. Peak powers were obtained up to 8 kW for a 22-ns pulsewidth at a 3.5-kHz repetition rates. The peak power dropped signicantly as the repetition rate was increased to 50 kHz. Index TermsOptical communications, optical ber amplier.

I. INTRODUCTION EVERAL optical sources have been proposed as potential transmitters for deep-space optical communications systems [1], [2]. The most stressing requirement on the source in these systems is a narrow pulsewidth combined with high peak power so that there is sufcient pulse energy density to be detected after propagating large interplanetary distances. In proposed rst-generation systems, pulse repetition rates were on the order of the tens of kilohertz, but missions in the near future are expected to require rates on the order of at least a few megahertz. With suitable coding, these repetition rates correspond to data rates of 100 kb/s and 10100 Mb/s, respectively. Candidate sources are pulsed, bulk crystal lasers, pulsed ber lasers or a pulsed diode laser combined with a ber amplier. Although one can obtain high-peak-power pulses from bulk lasers, the repetition rate is limited to a few megahertz by the active -switching or cavity-dumping process used to achieve pulsed lasing. Passively -switched or mode-locked schemes have shown multigigahertz operation [3], but these devices do not lend themselves to data encoding. On the other hand, the combination of a pulsed diode laser seeding a ber amplier can be operated without pulse distortion up to a few gigahertz, and if an external modulator is used between a continuous-wave (CW) diode and the ber amplier, this source can be operated to 50 GHz. One challenge in obtaining high peak powers greater than kilowatts is the limited power-handling capability

of single-mode ber. However, the terrestrial telecommunications infrastructure has invested signicantly in ber-based ampliers so that it may be possible to leverage this investment to obtain a ber-based source suitable for a deep-space optical communications transmitter. This paper describes experimental characterization and computational modeling of a pulsed master oscillator/power amplier (MOPA) source developed under contract with IPG Photonics, Oxford, MA, for laboratory use in a deep-space communications system. Section I describes the device and its experimental characterization, particularly the pulsed performance. Section II describes the computational modeling of the device and discusses the agreement with experimental results. Even though the intrinsic device parameters are largely unknown in the current system, enough information is given to replicate the physics, which is the goal of the modeling work. Modeling the dynamic pulse characteristics of high-power ber ampliers in complementary computational work by Wang and Po [4] showed similar results, but no experimental verication was realized. II. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS A. Description of the Optical Source The requirements on our optical source and the properties of the delivered device are listed in Table I. Based on the link analysis proposed for mission under study [2] and given the availability of -switched lasers to meet the low data rates involved, the driving requirements are an average power of 1 W with peak powers up 10 kW in a 25-ns pulse and repetition rates around 5 kHz. The optical source uses a master oscillator/power amplier (MOPA) architecture in which the oscillator is a directly modulated laser diode and the amplier consists of three stages of cladding-pumped Yb-doped ber (YDFA). The ber amplier chain is required to ensure there is enough gain to produce the peak power necessary for deep-space communications. However, this also leads to signicant amplied spontaneous emission (ASE) that can deplete the laser line or even destroy the amplier. To suppress ASE, spectral lters are required at each amplication stage, and an optical isolator is placed between each stage to suppress backward propagation. Fig. 1 shows a schematic of the amplier, and the typical pulse prole is shown after each amplication stage. B. Characterization For each pulse repetition frequency (PRF), two direct measurements are made to characterize the amplier performance:

Manuscript received February 10, 2004; revised November 1, 2004. This work was supported in part by the National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA) under the Mars Technology Program and was conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, under contract with NASA. This work was also supported in part by The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA. Mention of any supplier does not imply endorsement by NASA or the U.S. Government. M. W. Wright is with the Optical Communications Group, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 USA. G. C. Valley is with the Electronics and Photonics Laboratory, The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA 90245 USA. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JLT.2005.843532

0733-8724/$20.00 2005 IEEE

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TABLE I FIBER LASER REQUIREMENTS

Fig. 1. Schematic of the seeded amplier or MOPA laser from IPG Photonics. The pulse proles are only representative.

average power and a temporal pulse prole. From these, one can calculate the full-width at half-maximum power , the average pulse energy (FWHM) pulse length , and the peak power , as shown in Fig. 2. The peak power is calculated by setting the maximum of the observed pulse prole to unity, integrating the prole numerically, and dividing the average pulse energy by this integral. Note that this calculation for peak power differs signicantly from the estimate given by the average power divided by the pulsewidth since the proles are not well approximated by a square wave, as shown in Fig. 3. In addition, the effects of ASE, particularly at the lower data repetition rates, should strictly be accounted for in the derived pulse energies since this contributes to the

average energy. However, based on the later spectral measurements where the integrated ASE can be measured, the maximum contribution to the signal is on the order of 12% at low PRF. Hence, the peak powers and pulse energies would be overestimated by approximately this amount at the low repetition rates with no correction required at the higher repetition rates. Because the spectra were not taken at the exact PRFs shown in Fig. 2, the data has not been corrected for ASE. The pulse proles as a function of PRF were measured on a 1-GHz InGaAs detector with appropriate neutral density (ND) lters to avoid damage and saturation and are shown in Fig. 3. Note that the pulse proles are nearly at for PRFs above 30 kHz but that as the PRF is reduced below 10 kHz, large spikes

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Fig. 2. Pulse performance of ber MOPA.

Fig. 3. Pulse shape as a function of PRF frequency. The values represent the PRF in kilohertz. (Note that each curve is offset vertically by approximately 0.5 kW and horizontally by 0.05 s for clarity.)

develop on the leading edge of the pulses. The FWHM is more skewed on the leading edge of the pulse at lower repetition rates. Similar effects, called variously transient gain dynamics or gain saturation, have been observed in Er-doped ber ampliers on time scales substantially shorter than the upper state lifetime of Er ions in glass (10 ms) [5]. Thus, it is not surprising that such effects should be observed on submillisecond time scales 1 ms ( 10 kHz) in YDFAs where the upper state lifetime [6], [7]. The gain saturation manifests as temporal spikes on the pulse leading edge that increase and narrow with pump power, distorting the usually symmetric input pulse shape. To further understand the behavior of the amplier, we obtained the spectra shown in Fig. 4 for several PRFs with an optical spectrum analyzer. The central peak at 1065 nm is present at all PRFs, but at PRFs of 4, 5, and 8 kHz, a broad emission feature is found centered at about 1120 nm. This feature is thought to arise from stimulated Raman scattering in the glass ber due to the high peak powers present at the low PRFs. Even though the broadened spectra do not resolve the multiple Raman peaks [8], the frequency offset corresponds to that of fused silica. The small peak slightly above 960 nm is the residual pump diode signal. High-resolution spectra shown in Fig. 5 reveal the narrow 0.07-nm FWHM linewidth, independent of pulse repetition rate.

Another key parameter for an optical communications transmitter is the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) or extinction ratio (ER) of the pulsed output. For an optical-amplier-based system, the OSNR is dened as the ratio of the peak spectral intensity of the laser line to the intensity of the broad ASE background. To obtain the ER, one uses the intensity ratio of the temporal pulse to the emission between pulses. The ER can be derived from a single temporal trace of the pulse train; however, the OSNR is taken from the time-averaged spectra. From Fig. 4, the OSNR, with a bandwidth of 10 nm, is seen to vary from approximately 30 dB at the lower frequency of 5 kHz to greater than 40 dB at 50 kHz. More detailed temporal and spectral measurements of the output pulses taken off the central beam axis to determine if any higher order spatial modes are present also reveals the same range for the OSNR, conrming that the device is emitting a single spatial mode. Closer to the lower limit of 3.5 kHz, the nonlinearities from the Raman effect reduces the OSNR outside the bandwidth, but spectral ltering at the receiver could easily eliminate this effect. At a xed repetition rate, the Raman peak becomes more evident as the pump power is increased. As a data transmitter, the laser communications source must be able to emit pulses in the appropriate data format. For deepspace distances, the most efcient modulation format is pulse position modulation (PPM), where the position of the pulse in a given frame determines the bit [2]. As such, the laser transmitter must be capable of varying delays between pulses. To avoid excessive gain build-up in the ber amplier, which can result in amplier damage, a maximum time between pulses must be imposed on the modulation. This limits the number of slots in which the pulse can be emitted, which in turn constrains the word size. At the other end of the temporal constraint limits, there must be sufcient time between any two emitted pulses to allow for the build-up of the required gain. This constrains the maximum PRF. The trend of the pulse shape as a function of repetition rate is seen in Fig. 3. Even though variable pulse delay is possible with this device, the change in pulse energy across the repetition rate range would limit the utility of this device as a transmitter. Further development is necessary to maintain the pulse uniformity, perhaps requiring variable pump power or dynamic preshaping the input pulse to counter the ampliers pulse distortion [4] due to gain saturation, particularly at the lower repetition rates.

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Fig. 4. YDFA spectra for PRFs of (a) 4, (b) 5, (c) 8, (d) 10, (e) 20, and (f) 50 kHz.

Fig. 5.

High-resolution YDFA spectra at (a) 5 kHz and (b) 9 kHz with 0.02-nm resolution.

Fig. 6.

Pump and signal energy levels for Yb amplier.

Fig. 7. Schematic of a cladding-pumped ber showing single-mode core doped with Yb and multimode inner cladding that is undoped.

To simulate a communications system performance and optimize the optical source, we have developed the pulsed YDFA model described hereafter. III. COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF YDFA It should be noted that the exact device parameters, including pump power and ber length, are not known, but the present analysis gives insight into trends affecting the performance of the device. The aim is to understand the device limitations to

improve the ber laser design or determine the suitability of the device as a deep-space laser transmitter. Pulsed solutions for EDFAs, which are described by equations that are virtually identical to those appropriate for YDFAs, have been developed several years ago [5]. Here, we show the conventional solution [5, App. S] to the rate and power equations in space and time yields spiking to 10 kW for YDFAs with average powers of 1 10 kHz, as seen in our custom-developed to 2 W and PRFs amplier.

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TABLE II Yb FIBER AMPLIFIER PARAMETERS USED IN SIMULATIONS

We consider the ytterbium in the ber amplier as a broadened two-level system shown schematically in Fig. 6. Pump (with a wavelength of around laser diodes with a frequency 975 nm) are coupled into the ber and excite Yb ions in the core , where they can amplify a of the ber to the excited state signal at (with a wavelength around 1.06 ). The amplier is a cladding-pumped ber as shown schematically in Fig. 7. This means that the pump diodes are coupled into the inner-cladding region shown shaded, and multimode pump beams propagate through the inner cladding and the darkened core region. The signal is restricted to a single mode in the core. The equations that describe rare-earth-doped ber ampliers are well known [5][7]. Here, we write the equations given by Paschotta et al. [7] for signal power , forward and backward and , as a function of distance down the ber pump powers and fractional inversion in the Ytterbium , as a function of time . Since the Yb lifetime is long compared with the transit time of the pump and signal through the YDFA, we neglect the partial derivative of power with respect to time in our modeling [5].

Fig. 8. Typical calculated pulse shape for 4-kHz PRF.

Fig. 9. Peak power as a function of repetition rate (PRF) calculated for  0.25 (solid), 0.5 (dotted), 1 ms (dashed), and measured (points).

The ber parameters are the emission and absorption cross sections at the pump and signal wavelengths , the overlap , the total Yb factors at the pump and signal wavelengths , the pump and signal photon energy , number density , and the the effective areas of the pump and signal modes lifetime of the excited state of the Yb . The overlap factor for the pump is given by the area of the core divided by the area of the inner cladding. This is equivalent to assuming that the multimode pump beam has approximately uniform intensity across the inner cladding and that this uniformity is retained during propagation down the ber. There are proprietary ber design approaches that are used to maintain this situation so this is a reasonable approximation to rst order. Propagation of multimode pump beams in large-diameter bers has been extensively investigated but is beyond the scope of our investigation and is probably unnecessary in order to understand the behavior of the current YDFA. The overlap factor for the signal is taken to be

unity, which is equivalent to assuming that the signal mode has a top-hat prole. This assumption is not rigorously true either but is a good approximation for rst-order calculations. If more detail on the device becomes available, the actual overlap factor (probably on the order of 0.70.8) can be used in calculations. For our simulations, we use an ytterbium number density of m , an excited state lifetime of 0.5 ms, and the additional parameters given in Table II. The pump laser is actually broad band with a wavelength centered slightly less than 975 nm. We emphasize that these parameters are meant to illustrate the general behavior of pulsed YDFAs, and that exact values are not known for the current device. Fig. 8 shows a typical signal pulse prole predicted with our code for a 4-kHz PRF, 180-ns input pulses, a ber length of 2.5 m, and an average power in the input signal of 1 W. This ber amplier might correspond to the last stage of a three-stage device such as that obtained commercially. Note that this pulse has a faster rise time and sharper peak than the measured pulse shown in Fig. 2. This is typical of all calculations, and we believe this is due to stimulated Raman scattering, not included in the current model, that reduces the peak intensity below the predictions. Compared with our specic device, at various PRFs, Fig. 9 shows the peak power of the output spike as a function of

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pulsewidth and repetition rates from 3.5 to 50 kHz. A relatively simple computational model of the amplier gives qualitative agreement with the observations, in particular the transient pulse shape and pulse narrowing as a function of PRF. Though simple in that it neglects ASE, for example, it points to trades in the parameter space that may be useful in optimizing the amplier design and understanding the basic physics of amplier pulse transients. If more detailed information on the commercial ber amplier can be obtained from the vendor, then it will be worthwhile to benchmark the code to the amplier (as has been done for EDFAs by Lucent in their OASIX code [9]). REFERENCES
Fig. 10. Peak amplied signal power as a function of ber length. [1] K. Shaik and H. Hemmati, Wavelength selection criteria for laser communications, in Proc. SPIE, vol. 2381, San Jose, CA, 1995, p. 342. [2] C. Chen, J. W. Alexander, H. Hemmati, S. Monacos, T. Yan, S. Lee, J. R. Lesh, and S. Zingales, System requirements for a deep space optical transceiver, in Proc. SPIE, vol. 3615, San Jose, CA, 1999, p. 142. [3] L. Krainer, R. Paschotta, S. Lecomte, M. Moser, K. J. Weingarten, and U. Keller, Compact Nd:YVO lasers with pulse repetition rates up to 160 GHz, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. 38, no. 10, p. 1331, Oct. 2002. [4] Y. Wang and H. Po, Dynamic characteristics of double-clad ber ampliers for high-power pulse amplication, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 22622270, Oct. 2003. [5] E. Desurvire, Erbium-Doped Fiber Ampliers, Principles and Applications. New York: Wiley, 1994, pp. 410420. [6] G. C. Valley, Modeling cladding-pumped Er/Yb ber ampliers, Opt. Fiber Technol., vol. 7, no. 1, p. 21, 2001. [7] R. Paschotta, J. Nilsson, A. C. Tropper, and D. C. Hanna, Ytterbiumdoped ber ampliers, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. 33, no. 7, pp. 10491056, Jul. 1997. [8] G. P. Agrawal, Fiber-Optic Communication Systems. New York: Wiley, 1997. [9] P. C. Becker, N. A. Olsson, and J. R. Simpson, Erbium-Doped Fiber Ampliers, Fundamentals, and Technology. New York: Academic, 1999.

Fig. 11.

Peak amplied signal power as a function of pump power.

PRF with Yb lifetime as a parameter for a 13-m amplier bidirectionally pumped by two 1-W CW lasers with an input signal 0.5 ms are consistent of 600 mW. Note that the results for with the data, given the information available on the present dein different vice. Previous work has shown the variability of systems [6]. Other calculations show that the spike power is very sensitive to amplier properties; Fig. 10 shows spike power versus ber length, while Fig. 11 shows spike power versus pump power. In each example, the spiking turns on abruptly. There are several extensions of the limited calculations presented in this paper that should be performed to better understand the performance of a YDFA for deep-space optical communications. ASE should be added to the model and calculations of the extinction ratio performed. Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) should also be added to the model and compared with the SRS observation shown in Fig. 4. Calculations with the existing code can be generalized for different PPM waveforms to investigate pulse-shape dependence on interpulse time. IV. CONCLUSION The measurements and calculations presented in this paper detail the properties of a custom-developed YDFA as an optical source in a deep-space communications system. The system demonstrated peak powers up to 8 kW at 1064 nm with a 22-ns

Malcolm W. Wright received the undergraduate degrees in physics from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and the Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of New Mexico (UNM), Albuquerque. Following postdoctoral research at the Center for High Technology Materials, UNM, he was with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Kirtland Air Force Base, NM, developing high-power semiconductor lasers. He is currently with the Optical Communications Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, developing laser-based communication systems for future NASA ight projects. His research interests include the dynamics of high-speed lasers for free-space optical communications, high-power ber lasers, and space qualication of semiconductor and ber-based lasers for other space-borne applications. He has authored numerous technical papers and presentations. Dr. Wright is a Member of the American Physical Society.

George C. Valley has an A.B. degree in physics from Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, and the Ph.D. in physics from The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. He has worked at Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories (now Calspan Corporation), Buffalo, NY, and Hughes Aircraft Company (within the Electro-optic and Data Systems Group, Research Laboratories, and Space and Communications Company). He is currently a Senior Scientist at The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA. Past research work has focused on nonlinear optics, optical solitons, photorefractive materials, free-space laser communication, and wave propagation in random media. Current research interests include optical ber ampliers, simulation of mixed-signal integrated circuits, and photonic analog-to-digital converters. Dr. Valley is a Member of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA).