  This paper presents the progress in the fields of the modelling and design of
lanthanide ion doped chalcogenide glass fiber lasers. It presents the laser
cavity designs that have been developed in order to optimize the performance of
lanthanide ion doped chalcogenide glass fiber lasers. Also various numerical
algorithms that have been applied for the optimization of chalcogenide glass
lasers are reviewed and compared. The comparison shows that a combination of
less accurate but more robust algorithms with more accurate ones gives the most
promising performance.
