Abstract

Recent achievements in the development of high power lasers for Raman amplifiers renewed practical interest to their use in long-haul optical telecommunication systems. Raman amplifiers are capable provide a broad transmission bandwidths of 100 nm or more [1,2,3]. Simultaneously, Raman effect because of relatively high power of optical signals may also cause disturbances due to interaction between channels at different wavelengths. This results in the depletion of power of channels allocated in short-wavelength part of the band and amplification of long-wavelength channels. We demonstrate that such an effect may be compensated with the use of properly designed Raman amplifiers. On the other hand, high power multi-channel optical signal causes pump depletion in the Raman amplifier itself. Measurements of Raman cross-talk in a commercial WDM system are presented and the design of a Raman amplifier for 80 channels in the C and L bands is discussed, highligtning the effect of cross-talk and pump saturation on the gain tilt.

© 2000 IEEE