Bidirectional optical amplifier for time transfer using bidirectional WDM transmission

Abstract:

In this letter, we propose a bidirectional optical amplification scheme for fiber-optic time transfer based on bidirectional wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmission. The proposed scheme employs single unidirectional erbium-doped fiber amplifier (Uni-EDFA) for commercial optical networks to implement bidirectional optical amplification. Since including isolators, the effect of backscattering due to the accumulated amplification can be efficiently suppressed by the proposed amplifier. The proposed scheme is validated over different length fiber links in laboratory. Experimental results show that the proposed amplifier can support fiber-optic time transfer over several thousands of kilometers with an additional bidirectional delay difference fluctuation at picosecond magnitude.