Authors: Raja Ahmad, Stephane Chatigny and Martin Rochette
Broadband amplification of several high power communication channels is demonstrated using a multimode Erbium-Ytterbium doped fiber (EYDF) amplifier. The multimode feature of this amplifier aims at simultaneously enabling wide gain bandwidth and high output power. The amplifier provides a gain bandwidth spanning over the 1535.0 nm-1565.8 nm band. The amplifier also provides a high output power of >30.2 dBm, with ± 2.4 dB natural gain flatness over the bandwidth of interest. The performance of the amplifier is assessed in a 40 Gb/s WDM system, featuring no trace of modal dispersion in the eye diagram and a low power penalty (< 0.4 dB) on the bit error ratio (BER).