We present the first theoretical and experimental noise analysis of a fiber-optic recirculating-ring delay line (RDL) including a doped fiber amplifier to compensate for the roundtrip loss. Both thermal-like sources and laser sources are considered. The output source induced noise (signal-signal beat noise), signal-spontaneous (s-sp) beat noise, and spontaneous-spontaneous (sp-sp) beat noise spectra for a thermal-like source are calculated from the autocorrelation function of the output detector current. It is shown that all three electrical beat noise spectra can be expressed as correlations of the output optical signal and ASE spectra. The source-induced noise will normally be the dominating noise source, but in some applications, the other noise terms also will be of importance. We use our theory to define the maximum number of recirculations in an amplified RDL with a pulsed source, where the fundamental noise floor is determined by the sp-sp beat noise.
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