A low noise erbium doped fiber amplifier for optical preamplification has been demonstrated. The amplifier incoporates an optical isolator in its midway to prevent decrease of population inversion at the input port due to backward traveling amplified spontaneous emission. Then, high gain and low noise can be achieved simultaneously. A small signal gain of 34dB and a noise figure of 5.5dB have been achieved. With this amplifier, we obtained a receiver sensitivity of -39.7dBm with back to back configuration and -39.3dBm with 47km normal fiber for 10$^{-9}$BER at 2.5Gbps direct modulated optical signal.