Advances in materials and design for fiber amplifiers
01 January 2000
Summary form only given. The erbium-doped optical amplifier moved very quickly from invention in 1987 to the cornerstone of high speed long-haul networks. The C-band amp (1530-1565 nm) is ubiquitous and is being augmented with L-band amps (1565 to 1610 nm) to support 80 channels. With the demand for transmission capacity continuing to explode, other technologies such as Raman are under development to fill in the low-loss transmission window of silica optical fiber