Corning Incorporated

David Jacob

Michel Prassas

Peter Gerard Wigley

Mark Francis Krol

Edward F Murphy

Felton Aaron Flood

Jean-Philippe J De Sandro

There is proposed an optical amplifier apparatus particularly for use in networks distributing signals by optical fibers, comprising first and second parallel optical branches ( ), the first optical branch ( ) including optical amplifier means ( ) for amplifying digital signals and the second optical branch including optical amplifier means ( ) for amplifying analogue signals, the optical amplifier means ( ) of the first optical path ( ) being adapted to amplify bidirectional digital signals and the optical amplifier means ( ) of the second optical branch ( ) being adapted to amplify unidirectional analogue signals.

Optical amplifier apparatus

A glass composition well suited for use in optical amplification consists of an erbium-doped borate glass composition comprising at least 30 mole percent of B O , not over 30 mole percent of SiO , preferably not over 5 mole percent of La O , a ratio of B O to (&Sgr;X O&plus;&Sgr;YO) that is at least 3.5, preferably 4.5, where X O represents monovalent metal oxides(s) and YO represents divalent metal oxides, the glass providing a wide useful bandwidth (50 nm and greater) for optical amplification around the 1545 nm region.

Glass composition

A multichannel fiber optic communication network incorporates multichannel fiber optical amplifiers having different functions but designed to use substantially identical gain flattening filters. This is achieved by designing the amplifiers to have total insertion losses such that their respective internal gains (internal gain=net gain+total insertion loss) are substantially the same, most preferably within 1 dB.

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Avon, France

David Jacob