Noise and transmission performance improvement of broadband distributed Raman amplifier using bidirectional Raman pumping with dual order co-pumps.

We demonstrate a low noise bidirectional broadband distributed Raman pumping scheme combining dual order co-propagated pumps without increasing the signal RIN level. The noise performance improvement is compared experimentally and numerically with conventional counter-pumping only and bidirectional pumping with only a 2nd order co-pump for a 70nm bandwidth and 61.5km distributed Raman amplifier. The proposed broadband pumping scheme shows 1.2dB maximum noise figure improvement and extends the long-haul transmission reach up to 6150km with a Q-factor improvement of ~0.7dB compared with counter-pumping only scheme.