A Novel Bi-wavelength Method for Accurately Measuring Gain and Noise Characteristics of an Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifier for Multi-Channel Wavelength Division Multiplexing Transmission

Gain and noise figure (NF) are the most important two parameters of an erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) for a multi-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission system. A simple bi-wavelength method for accurate gain and NF spectrum measurement of EDFA for WDM applications is proposed. A saturating input signal, whose power equals to the sum of all the WDM signal power and whose wavelength is determined by the channel numbers, and the wavelength of the WDM input signals saturates the EDFA in a degree as the same as the WDM signals input. Meanwhile, a small power probe signal scans and measures the gain and the NF value at every wavelength of the WDM input signals. Investigative results by numerical simulation show that the gain and the NF spectra measured by this method have good agreement with the real spectra of the WDM signal input in a large total input power range. The maximum errors of the gain and the NF are less than 0.2 dB and 0.16 dB, respectively, for a 50-channel input case. The method is competent for the accurate gain and the NF spectrum measurement of the fibre preamplifier and the line-amplifier for WDM applications and has the advantages of simplicity, convenience and easy implement.