Novel Design of Flat Gain Spectrum Raman Fiber Amplifiers Based on Ant Colony Optimization

In this work, a new metaheuristic called ant colony optimization (ACO) is introduced into the design of flat-gain-spectrum Raman fiber amplifiers (RFAs) for the first time. In this novel design method, the pump powers and pump wavelengths are optimized by ACO to obtain a flat gain spectrum with a prespecified maximum gain ripple under the given parameters of RFAs. The simulations show that the proposed method is efficient and stable. Finally, a C-band RFA with a gain ripple of 0.32 dB is designed to demonstrate the technique in detail.