Design, Fabrication and Characterisation of a Hybrid Few-Mode Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier

Abstract

For increasingly popular space division multiplexing (SDM) systems using few-mode fibers a hybrid few-mode erbium-doped fiber amplifier design is proposed in this Master thesis.
Modeling the amplifier and simulations are used to optimize the coupling of both the signal and pump-source to the amplifier and verify the compatibility of the erbium-doped few-mode fiber with other readily available few-mode fibers. The amplifier is fabricated and characterised using a digital holography setup to verify its capabilities in SDM systems, and is demonstrated to have a gain >20 dB, while maintaining a  differential modal gain of ≤2.5 dB and mode dependent loss <1.0 dB.

Date of Award	12 Nov 2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chigo M. Okonkwo (Supervisor 1)