Radiation effect on EDFA for inter-satellite optical communication on low dose orbits

The erbium doped fiber, optical isolator and WDM coupler, which are three key optical components of commercial erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), are radiated to the radiation dose of 5krad by electron. The radiated erbium-doped fiber (EDF) make the output power of EDFA come down 0.5dB when the input power is between -12dBm and-5dBm. The NF climb up 1dB. However, the peak wavelength changes little. The radiation experiment results also show that the deterioration of the optical isolator and WDM coupler can be neglected at the dose of 5krad. In order to assure the accuracy of analysis, the recovery experiment has been done to correct the radiation effect on the EDFA. The results indicate that if optical communication systems have enough redundancy, the EDFA can be used on the low dose orbits without any radiation protection for inter-satellite optical communication.