Optical beacon source utilizing pulsed fiber amplifiers
AssigneeCybel, LLC.
InventorsJean-Marc Pierre Delavaux, Wiktor Tomasz Walasik, Glen Munroe Williams
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Abstract
A pulsed optical beacon source is formed of a fiber-based amplifier including a preamplifer stage (responsive to a CW seed laser source) and a booster stage coupled to the output of the preamplifier stage. The pump input to at least one stage is pulsed and controlled in a manner that allows for the formation of a pulsed beacon output that is able to perform the PAT requirements of a beacon source, while also allowing for a low bit rate (e.g., a few Hz to a few kHz) upstream data signal to be sent between the beacon source and a target's optical receiver.
Claims20
An optical beacon source comprising
- a continuous-wave (CW) seed laser source for providing a continuous optical signal;
- an optical fiber-based preamplifier including a first section of rare-earth doped gain fiber, the optical fiber preamplifier receiving as separate inputs the continuous optical signal provided by the seed laser source and a first pump beam, the pump beam operating at a wavelength suitable for amplifying the continuous optical signal and forming an amplified optical signal at the output of the preamplifier;
- and
- an optical fiber-based power booster amplifier including a second section of rare-earth doped gain fiber, the power booster amplifier receiving as separate inputs the amplified optical signal output from the optical fiber-based preamplifier and a second pump beam operating at the wavelength suitable for further amplifying the amplified optical signal to create a beacon output signal, wherein at least one of the first and second pump beams comprises a pulsed pump beam such that the output from the optical fiber-based power booster amplifier comprises a pulsed, quasi-CW, beacon optical signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.