A fiber amplifier is provided, including a pump laser (202), a pump and signal combiner (203), and a few-mode doped fiber (204). The pump laser (202) is configured to output pump light. The pump and signal combiner (203) is configured to couple input few-mode signal light and the pump light into the few-mode doped fiber (204). Refractive indexes of a fiber core of the few-mode doped fiber (204) are distributed to be gradient along a radial direction of a cross section, the fiber core is etched with periodic gratings along an axial direction, and periods of the gratings satisfy a phase matching condition. The fiber amplifier achieves strong coupling and co-amplification between optical signal modes, thereby reducing a differential gain between mode groups.

There is described a fiber laser system generally having a pump laser generating a pump laser beam; and a length of optical fiber optically coupled to the pump laser, the length of optical fiber having: a laser cavity having a cavity path, a first fiber Bragg grating having a first reflectivity profile, a second filter having a second filter profile, and an optical gain region between the first fiber Bragg grating and the second filter along the cavity path, the first reflectivity profile being spectrally detuned from the second filter profile, the first fiber Bragg grating having a first refractive index profile comprising a full width at half maximum bandwidth of at least 0.2 nm and a Gaussian-like apodization, wherein, upon pumping of the optical gain region with the pump laser beam and mode locking of the laser cavity, optical pulses are circulated along the cavity path; and an output.

The present disclosure generally relates optical amplifier modules. In one form for example, an optical amplifier module includes a booster optical amplifier configured to increase optical power of a first optical signal. The module also includes a preamp optical amplifier configured to increase optical power of a second optical signal and a pump laser optically coupled to the booster optical amplifier and the preamp optical amplifier. The pump laser is configured to provide a booster power to the booster optical amplifier and a preamp power to the preamp optical amplifier, the preamp power is effective to induce a gain in optical power to provide a target optical power of the second optical signal from the preamp optical amplifier, and the booster power is dependent on the preamp power.

Systems and methods for optical amplifier failure prediction using Machine Learning (ML), such as for an Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA), are described. A method include obtaining a plurality of inputs from an optical amplifier associated with an optical network; analyzing the plurality of inputs with a trained machine learning model; obtaining an estimate of a total pump current of the optical amplifier as an output of the trained machine learning model; and comparing the estimate of a total pump current to a measured total pump current of the optical amplifier. The steps can include determining a health of the optical amplifier based on the comparing

Disclosed herein are methods and systems configuring a raman amplifier. One exemplary system may be provided with an optical amplifier deployed in an optical network, the optical amplifier having a plurality of raman pumps configured to obtain a desired gain profile. An actual gain profile and a raman pump configuration of each of the plurality of raman pumps may be processed by a network administration device using a first machine learning model to produce a combined optical transmission segment attribute representing attributes of an optical segment of the optical network. The combined optical transmission segment attribute and the desired gain profile may be processed with a second machine learning model to produce corrected raman pump configurations for each of the plurality of raman pumps of the raman amplifier. The corrected raman pump configurations may be used to configure each of the plurality of raman pumps of the raman amplifier.

An optical fiber amplifier is formed to include a grating structure inscribed within the rare earth-doped gain fiber itself, providing distributed wavelength-dependent filtering (attenuation) and minimizing the need for any type of gain-flattening filter to be used at the output of the amplifier. The grating structure may be of any suitable arrangement that provides the desired loss spectrum, for example, similar to the profile of a prior art discrete GFF. Various types of grating structures that may be used to provide distributed wavelength-dependent filtering along the gain include, but are not limited to, tilted gratings, weak Bragg gratings, long-period grating (LPG), and any suitable combination of these grating structures.

A gain flattening filter includes a first optical fiber that has a core, a first cladding, and a second cladding and that has a uniform composition in a length direction; and a pair of second optical fibers fused to both ends of the first optical fiber. The first optical fiber has a first section in which a slanted refractive index grating is formed and a pair of second sections connecting both ends of the first section to the pair of second optical fibers. The first cladding contains a photosensitive material whose refractive index increases upon irradiation with light having a specific wavelength. In the core, a tensile stress remains in the first section. An average MFD of the second sections is larger than an average MFD of the second optical fibers and smaller than an average MFD of the first section.

A Raman amplifier includes a first light source that outputs a primary pumping light, which propagates in a same direction as a propagation direction of a signal light, to an optical transmission line for Raman amplification, a second light source that outputs a secondary pumping light, which pumps and amplifies the primary pumping light and propagates in the same direction as the propagation direction, to the optical transmission line, and a control unit that controls a gain for the signal light by adjusting power of the secondary pumping light.

A system for communicating supervisory information between amplifier nodes in an optical communication network utilizes modulation of an included pump source to superimpose the supervisory information on data signals (typically customer data signals) propagating between the amplifier nodes transmitted customer signals. The modulated pump appears as a modulated envelope on the amplified data signal exiting the amplifier node, and may be recovered by suitable demodulation components located at the second node (i.e., the destined receiver of the supervisory information). The supervisory information may include monitoring messages, provisioning data, protocol updates, etc., and is utilized as an input to an included modulator, which then forms a drive signal for the pump controller.

A method and system for amplifying optical signals includes generating idler signals for input signals using an optical pump at a first non-linear element (NLE). An intermediate stage including a Raman amplifier performs pump amplification using the output from the first NLE along a single optical path. Optical power monitoring of the input signals may be used for power equalization. The intermediate stage may include a wavelength selective switch for a certain degree of phase modulation. The phase-sensitive amplified signal is generated at a second NLE using the optical pump. Optical power monitoring of the input signals may be used for power equalization and other control functions to achieve low-noise operation.