Use of LD-pumped erbium-doped fiber preamplifiers with optimal noise filtering in a FDMA-FSK 1 Gb/s star network

Abstract
An erbium-doped fiber amplifier was implemented in a closely spaced FDMA-FSK (frequency-division-multiple-access-frequency-shift-keyed) optical star network with a signaling rate of 1 Gb/s per channel. The fiber preamplifier, which is laser-diode pumped, increases the sensitivity of the direct-detection avalanche photodiode (APD) receiver by 14 dB, allowing for an increased number of network users. This enhanced sensitivity nearly corresponds to all of the available gain of the amplifier. Furthermore, the amplifier noise is optimally filtered by means of a wide band interference filter cascaded with a narrow band fiber Fabry-Perot filter.