Performance Analysis of Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier’s and FWM Characteristics in a Passive Optical Network

摘要

As optical network system become more complex and hence expensive, hands-on experiments based on optical network simulation have become very important for teaching in technical and technological institutes. This study investigates the performance of the optical network under different scenario with a minimum cost. An experimental study using OptiWave OptiSystem simulator to observe the performance of Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) and determine its characteristic under varying input power at 1550nm range was carried out. It further demonstrated the performance of EDFA under dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) by observing its characteristics when using four transmitter with wavelengths 1560nm, 1550nm, 1541nm, 1532nm multiplexed over a fiber link and amplified by an EDFA. In a further experiment in this study, the effect of Four Wave Mixing (FWM) amplified over a DWDM network was observed, and by extension the effect of reducing the Chromatic dispersion coefficient from 16.75psm/km to 11.75psm/km on the FWM formed was shown. The result obtained showed that for an EDFA to be used as an amplifier the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) characteristic of the EDFA must be low in order to obtain a high Optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR). It was also observed from the eye diagram obtained that the inter symbol interference (ISI) was reduced at wavelength of 1541nm and 1532nm due to lower attenuation at this range. The result also showed that the effect of FWM increased with increase in input power at the transmitter and by increasing the chromatic dispersion coefficient, the effect of FWM on the output wave transmitted was reduced.