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Designer and manufacturer of optical fibers and speciality photonics solutions, OFS, demonstrated transmission reach extension through amplification in the O-band with its newly developed bismuth-doped fiber at the recently held OFC 2020. The single-stage, MSA-compliant bismuth-doped O-Band fiber amplifier prototype provides up to 18 dB gain and +15 dBm output power over 40 nm gain bandwidth, which can be centered between 1290 and 1310 nm. OFS and T8, LLC., a Russian network equipment manufacturer, used commercially available 100 Gbps QSFP-28 modules driven by commercial network equipment to demonstrate that the reach of 30 km specified LR4 modules from three suppliers can be extended up to 75 km of fiber.
Unlike non-silica-based praseodymium doped fiber, bismuth-doped silica fiber is similar to conventional erbium-doped fiber in splicing, mechanical properties, and manufacture. The simple amplifier design makes BDFA an equivalent of EDFA in the O-band. OFS expects rapid adoption in a number of applications, including test and measurement, telecom/datacom, and optical coherent tomography for medical diagnostics.
T8 demonstrated that the reach of off-the-shelf QSFP-28 modules and T8 designed transmission gear can be extended over 2 times by using a single BDFA stage. In the next few months, the company is planning to test OFS designed amplifiers in the installed fiber network in the Moscow region of Russia.
