Fig. 10. Normalized power crosstalk levels versus the fiber dispersion for
2.5, 10, and 40 Gb/s bit rates. There are five cascaded fiber spans (100
km/span) and the optical channel spacing is 0.8 nm. The launched pump
optical power at each span is 8.5 dBm.
Although most people would think that XPM crosstalk
was significant only in low dispersion fibers, Fig. 10 clearly
indicates that for uncompensated systems, before the system
dispersion limit, higher dispersion generally produces more
XPM crosstalk. On the other hand, in dispersion compensated
optical systems, high local dispersion helps to reduce the
XPM-induced phase modulation and low accumulated system
dispersion will reduce the phase noise to intensity noise
conversion.
C. Dispersion Compensation Strategy
It has been reported that XPM-induced crosstalk in fiber
systems can be reduced by dispersion compensation [7]. Moreover,
the position where the dispersion compensator is placed
is also important. The least amount of dispersion compensation
is required if the compensator is placed in front of the receiver.
In this position, the dispersion compensator compensates XPM
crosstalk created in all the fiber spans. The optimum amount
of dispersion compensation for the purpose of XPM crosstalk
reduction is about 50% of the total dispersion in the system
[7]. Although this lumped compensation scheme requires the
minimum amount of dispersion compensation, it does not give
the best overall system performance.
Fig. 11 shows the normalized power crosstalk levels versus
the percentage of dispersion compensation in a 10-Gb/s, sixspan
system with NZDSF of 100 km/span. The dispersion of
transmission fiber is 2.9 ps/nm/km and the launched optical
power into each fiber span is 8.5 dF3m. Nonlinear effects in
the dispersion compensating fibers are neglected for simplicity.
Different dispersion compensation schemes are compared in
this figure. Trace (1) is obtained with compensation in each
span. In this scheme XPM-induced crosstalk created from
each span can be precisely compensated, so at 100% of
compensation the XPM crosstalk is effectively reduced. Trace
(2) was obtained with the dispersion compensator placed
after every two spans. In this case, the value of dispersion
compensation can only be optimized for either the first span