Automated Polarization-Insensitive C & L Band Fiber Optical Parametric Amplifier for Bidirectional Long-Reach Access Networks

We demonstrate a fully automated polarization-insensitive fiber optical parametric amplifier (PI-FOPA) self-adjusting its parameters to compensate for drifts in real-time. The automation algorithm adjusts the PI-FOPA parameters to set and maintain the target polarization independent gain for a selected channel. We employ this PI-FOPA in a long-reach access network scenario to simultaneously amplify WDM downstream in the C band and WDM upstream in the L band, whereas the downstream and the upstream are equivalent to 10x 100 Gbit/s polarization-division multiplexed QPSK signals and 10x bursty 10 Gbit/s on-off keying signals respectively. The PI-FOPA provides net gain >17dB across all channels and the total output signal power up to 24.6 dBm. This demonstration denotes the first ever simultaneous amplification of WDM signals by a PI-FOPA in C&L bands and on both sides of the PI-FOPA pump.