Impact of the gain-saturation characteristic of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers on suppression of atmospheric-turbulence-induced optical scintillation in a terrestrial free-space optical communication system

We have evaluated the suppression effect of atmospheric-turbulence-induced optical scintillation in terrestrial free-space optical (FSO) communication systems using a gain-saturated erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA). The variation of EDFA output signal power has been measured with different amounts of gain saturation and modulation indices of the optical input signal. From the measured results, we have found that the peak-to-peak power variation was decreased drastically below 2 kHz of modulation frequency, in both 3-dB and 6-dB gain compression cases. Then, the power spectral density (PSD) of optical scintillation has been calculated with Butterworth-type transfer function. In the cal-culation, different levels of atmospheric-turbulence-induced optical scintillation have been taken into account with different values of the Butterworth cut-off frequency. Finally, the suppression effect of optical scintillation has been estimated with the measured frequency response of the EDFA and the calculated PSD of the optical scintillation. From our estimated results, the atmospheric-turbulence-induced optical scintillation could be suppressed efficiently, as long as the EDFA were operated in a deeply gain-saturated region.