Limitations on lightwave communications imposed by optical-fiber nonlinearities

Abstract

Optical nonlinearities in the context of lightwave systems limitations are described. The nature and severity of system degradation due to stimulated Raman scattering, carrier-induced phase noise, stimulated Brillouin scattering, and four-photon mixing are discussed. The system power limitations are plotted as a function of a number of wavelength-multiplexed channels. Methods for scaling these results with changes in system parameters are presented.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>