Gain-clamped erbium-doped fiber-ring lasing amplifier with low noise figure by using an interleaver

A novel all-optical gain-clamped erbium-doped fiber-ring lasing amplifier (GC-EDFRLA) has been demonstrated, in which the odd port of a 100/200-G interleaver was used to form a fiber-ring cavity to produce lasing oscillation for locking the gain and its even port was employed to export the amplified signals. In such a way, the problem existing in the conventional GC-EDFRLA is solved. The signal can be exported separately without the lasing power while the noise figure (NF) is very low. Finally, the GC-EDFRLA with a low NF of 4.2 dB was achieved.