Earticle

With the rise in demand for channel capacity, Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technique is employed in optical communication networks. Gain Flattened Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) is used in optical WDM system to obtain a uniform output power level. The performance of EDFA depends on various parameters such as fiber length, pump power, pumping wavelength and pumping technique. The objective of this paper is to analyze the performance of EDFA for different pumping techniques namely co-propagating, counter-propagating and bidirectional propagating in a 32 channel C-band optical WDM transmission system at different levels of pump power and different fiber lengths. The system has been analyzed on the basis of received power, BER, gain, noise figure and Q- Factor in the wavelength range of 1528nm to 1562nm at -25dBm transmission power and 0.5nm channel spacing. The results obtained using different pumping techniques are compared to find an appropriate pumping technique which optimizes the performance of the optical WDM transmission system.