This project is upgrading the laboratory component of optics by introducing current instrumentation related to setting up and testing erbium-doped fiber optical amplifiers and distributed feedback lasers. Students are characterizing the output of a distributed feedback laser by measuring it output power, linearity, central wavelength, and spectral width using power meters, monochromators, and scanning interferometers. They are assembling and testing an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) system. Using a leveled sine-wave generator as a driving source or an LED and a DFB laser, appropriate detector and a wide bandwidth oscilloscope, they are measuring amplification and linearity of the EDFA for a range of signal strengths. They are also measuring bit error rate using a BERT driving a DFB laser source, sending a signal through a length of fiber with and without amplification by an EDFA. Finally, they are using two DFB lasers as sources to make a narrowly-spaced (in wavelength) wavelength division multiplexer which inputs its signal to an EDFA before the demultiplexing stage. All instruments are representative of those which a technician working with fiber optics uses.
