Comparison between a symmetric bidirectional-pumping and a unidirectional-pumping configurations in an erbium fiber ring laser

An experimental comparative study between two wide-band wavelength-tunable erbium doped fiber ring lasers (EDFRLs) with the same active fiber length but with two different pumping configuration (forward unidirectional pumping and symmetric bidirectional pumping) is reported in this paper. Both fiber lasers cover almost the whole Cband and L-band with a single setup laser. The signal wavelength can be tuned in a wide range of 60 nm with the two presented lasers. Nevertheless, experimental results verify that a higher output power is obtained with the bidirectional pump configuration.