Performance degradation of all-optical gain-clamped EDFAs due to relaxation-oscillations and spectral-hole burning in amplified WDM networks

Dynamic power excursion imposed on the amplified signal due to relaxation oscillations in the laser and static residual variations in signal gain arising from spectral-hole burning (SHB) were observed in high-resolution measurements of laser automatic gain control (AGC) of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs). These effects will limit the ability of laser AGC to protect against power transients in amplified wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) optical networks.