Abstract
In this manuscript, the gain of the EDFA-Raman hybrid optical amplifier (HOA) is maximized using a popular nature inspired Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA). The dominating parameters of HOA, length of Raman amplifier and EDFA and its pump powers are optimized to get the maximum possible gain. Further, the performance of WOA is compared by using other metaheuristic techniques such as Real coded Genetic Algorithm, Differential Evolution, Particle Swarm Optimization, to optimize the same model of HOA. WOA proves to be a better optimization technique as it is able to find maximum gain, have a better convergence curve and box plot performance as compared to the other three techniques. Moreover, the gain flatness and noise figure performance of HOA is compared with EDFA and Raman amplifier.