NIST Measurement Services: Measurement Assurance Program for the Spectral Density of Relative Intensity Noise of Optical Fiber Sources Near 1550 nm

Abstract

This paper provides the documentation to establish a measurement assurance program (MAP) for the spectral density of relative intensity noise (RIN) of optical sources. A standard is made available to industry for high-precision calibration of RIN measurement systems. The device is an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) to which is coupled a linear polarizer followed by a narrow pass-band optical filter. Measurements show that the spectral density of the RIN is invariant under attenuation and pump current, and constant from zero t many tens of gigahertz. These properties render it suitable as a standard for the calibration of high-speed systems. We characterize the device for use as a standard in the 1550 nm wavelength range over a radio-frequency (rf) baseband of 0.1 GHz to 1.1 GHz. For the typical device studied in depth, the magnitude of the RIN is -109.9 dB/Hz with uncertainty {