Evaluation of a high-power optical amplifier for intersatellite links

摘要

The NeLS project is a Japanese effort aiming to develop key technologies for global multimedia mobile satellite communications service. In the NeLS System, all satellites are connected to four neighboring satellites by using optical inter-satellite link (ISL) considering four-wave WDM technology. Optical ISL requires very high optical output power. And to meet such requirements, a high power optical amplifier such as EDFA will be used. In such case, nonlinear effects of an EDFA will cause degradation of communication performance of OISL. We developed an OISL-WDM Simulator to evaluate such degradation experimentally. A Yb co-doped EDFA is used as OHPA. In the experiment, BER characteristics were measured and found that degradation is 0.4dB up to 2W output and 0.9dB at 4.5W output. From these results we concluded this technology could be applicable to WDM optical intersatellite link applications.