Performance evaluation of different optical amplifiers in spectrum sliced free space optical link

Abstract

Free space optics (FSO) is well-competent and premier technology to cater the high speed services in different geographical areas such as hilly areas and inter building network. In this paper, we successfully demonstrated the spectrum sliced wavelength division multiplexed FSO system. In order to make system bandwidth efficient, frequency spacing of 75â†GHz is taken among the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) channels. Carrier spectrum broadening is achieved for spectrum slicing through the nonlinearity called self-phase modulation. Moreover, requirement of multiple laser sources is eliminated. However, in conventional WDM systems, n numbers of lasers are needed to generate n WDM channels. To strengthen the signal in this FSO system, three optical amplifiers are scrutinized such as erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and Raman amplifier in terms of Q-factor and bit error rate (BER). Results revealed that EDFA is best amplifier in proposed SS-WDM-FSO system.