Intrinsic multichannel power control in cascaded power-equalizing erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

We numerically investigate the performance of a cascade of four-channel pow er-equalizing reflective erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs). The EDFAs r eflect different channels at different points so that different channels in teract with partly different sections of the EDFA. Thus, the gain for diffe rent channels saturate partly independently. The channels can self-heal ind ependently in the cascade, which therefore is less sensitive to harmful cha nnel-dependent and channel-independent inter-amplifier loss variations than a cascade of normal, nonequalizing, EDFAs is. Moreover, the design channel -power is maintained even if channels are dropped. In contrast to a cascade of typical nonequalizing EDFAs, we can in addition control the channel pow er evolution via the pumping of the power-equalizing EDFAs.