Stability comparison of two quadruple-wavelength switchable erbium-doped fiber lasers

An experimental stability comparison between two different switchable Erbium-doped fiber lasers (EDFL) is carried out. Both topologies use fiber Bragg grating reflectors in order to select the emission wavelengths and two 2 × 4 optical switches. By adjusting the switches combinations, the lasers can be switched among the sixteen different wavelength lasing configurations. An output power and wavelength instability analysis with time for both topologies was performed. The experimental results confirm that the topology based on a serial configuration offers a better stability, efficiency and higher optical signal-to-noise ratios (OSNR) than the one based on a parallel configuration.