Evolution of EDFA from Single-Core to Multi-Core and Related Recent Progress in Optical Communication

摘要

A compact 1.48 mu m InGaAsP laser-diode (LD)-pumped erbium-doped optical fiber amplifier (EDFA) was invented in 1989 and it revolutionized optical communication in combination with a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technique. Recently, in addition to the existing single-core EDFA, a multi-core EDFA, which employs space division multiplexing (SDM), was developed to increase transmission capacity even further. The first half of this paper describes the evolution of the EDFA from a single-core to a multi-core device and the second half focuses on related topics in optical communication. (C) 2014 The Japan Society of Applied Physics