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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS |
2."Student Laboratory Experiments on Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers and Lasers", International Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics, Cancun, Mexico 27-30 July 1999.
Published in the Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 88, No. 1, pp.41-53, January 2000. (Copyright IEEE 2000)
Photonics laboratory experiments for modern technology based courses |
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The modern photonics and optical communications industries have placed ever increasing demands on the supply of skilled graduates who are competent in the design, installation and operation of photonics systems. In response to this demand, we have developed a range of photonics laboratory teaching experiments to support accompanying lecture courses by underpinning fundamental principles with hands-on experimental experience. These systems enable students and trainees to experimentally investigate the basic principles, characteristics and design of optical waveguides, optical communications systems, optical amplifiers and fault location techniques for optical networks, with additional scope for open ended investigative work. The experiments have been designed with the constraints of academic teaching budgets firmly in mind whilst still allowing the investigation of real technical issues such as mode spectrum analysis in optical waveguides and optical pulse dispersion / bit rate limits in fibre communications systems. The educational and overall system design philosophies, hardware and experiments are reported in this paper.
| IEEE_PAPER.PDF |
Published in SPIE Proceedings: International Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics, Cancun, Mexico 27-30 July 1999.
Student Laboratory Experiments on Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers and Lasers |
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The Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) has now replaced optoelectronic repeaters as the primary design option
for extending the range and capacity of the World's fiber optic telecommunications systems. In a broader sense,
optical amplifiers are the basis of all lasers. It is therefore essential that students of science and engineering
have a broad appreciation of, and practical familiarity with, optical amplifiers in general, EDFAs in particular
and their applications in lasers. To achieve these objectives, Strathclyde University in collaboration with OPTOSCI
LTD. have developed an EDFA / Laser educator kit which enables students to experimentally investigate the gain
and noise characteristics of an EDFA, including issues such as signal and pump saturation, gain efficiency, amplified
spontaneous emission and optical beat noise. With a simple extension to the basic amplifier kit the students are
able to construct an erbium doped fiber ring laser and to investigate its power characteristics (threshold and
slope efficiency) as a function of output coupling ratio and intra-cavity loss. The experimental objectives, design
philosophies, hardware, experimental procedures and results will be examined in detail in this paper.
| CANCUN_PAPER.PDF |