Abstract

The maximum reach of ultra-longhaul on-off keying transmission systems is mainly limited by the three length dependent parameters: OSNR degradation, nonlinear (NL) signal distortion, and fiber polarization mode dispersion (PMD) (in the case of 40 Gb/s per channel systems). The penalty arising from nonlinear effects depends strongly on the link design, while the penalty caused by PMD is related (in the case of linear signal propagation), to the intrinsic fiber PMD and the specific signal modulation format. It is the goal of system engineering to allocate adequate margin for each penalty source such that the system range is maximized under the constraint that the total penalty is covered by the link budget.

© 2002 Optical Society of America