Dispersion-managed DWDM Transmission System

for Ultra High Speed Communication

Iqbal Hasan
#1
, Mashad Uddin Saleh
#2
, Nabeela Kauser
#3
, Dr. Mohammad Faisal
*4
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
1
tonmoysky@yahoo.com
2
mashad2810@yahoo.com
3
smileyjeny@gmail.com
3
mdfaisal@eee.buet.ac.bd



Abstract In this paper, we numerically study the characteristics of dispersion managed (DM)
fiber. We show the effect of nonlinearities in the dense wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM)
transmission performances. We also show the effect of varying the frequency spacing and channel
lengths for various numbers of channels on the power penalty in DWDM transmission system.
Finally we show these effects for different bitrates e.g. 40-Gb/s, 80-Gb/s, 120-Gb/s and 160-Gb/s.
Here we take the design of a dispersion compensating fiber and residual dispersion into account.

Keywords Dense wavelength division multiplexing, dispersion, residual dispersion, frequency
spacing, power penalty, optical fiber.


I. INTRODUCTION
Now-a-days a remarkable increase has been seen in data traffic and the need for an ultrahigh-capacity
transmission system has no other alternative. To meet this demand, a lot of experiments and reports have
been observed. There have been researches on the effects on increasing the no of channels in the DWDM
transmission systems. However, there have been few reports on the effects of residual dispersion, different
frequency spacing, bit error rate (BER) on the performance of DWDM system as ultrahigh speed
communication.
In this paper, we figure out numerically the relationship between dispersion managed optical fiber and
DWDM transmission performances. We show these effects in SSMF (Standard Single Mode Fiber), DSF
(Dispersion Shifted Fiber) and NZDSF (Nonzero Dispersion Shifted Fiber). We show the power penalties
for different channels, frequency spacing and bitrates. We describe the BER of these DWDM transmission
systems for variation of different parameters. Moreover we take into consideration the effect and
characteristics of DCF (Dispersion Compensated Fiber) and thereby clarify the feasibility of these
different transmission lines.

II. MODELLING OF DWDM TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
Fig 1 demonstrates a model for our DWDM transmission system. The signals were multiplexed with an
equal channel spacing of 25GHz from frequency 193.55 THz.

Fig. 1 DWDM transmission system model
In our model, we considered 60Km channel length of SSMF with dispersion parameter D
c
as 17ps/nm-
km compensated by DCF. The attenuation coefficient , nonlinear coefficient , responsivity R,
Dispersion slope
d
dD
c were set as 0.24 dB/km, 5.8410
-6
m
-2
W
-2
, 0.85 A/W, 0.055 ps/nm
2
-km respectively.
III. EFFECT OF NO OF CHANNELS OVER DWDM SYSTEM
As our first observation, we inspected the effect of increasing the no of channels over the DWDM
system. We found that the power penalty increased as the no of channels increased. But after a critical no
of channels, the power penalty almost saturates. In fig 2, the whole procedure was repeated for different
input powers of 1mW, 1.5mW and 2mW respectively and similar results were found. However, it is
observed that the power penalty is minimized for the lower input power.


Fig. 2: Calculated relationship between power penalty and no of channels
In the fig 2 above, the increase of power penalty with the increase in channels is due to the FWM (Four
wave mixing) effect in the fiber. Because of the FWM process a large number of new sideband signals are
generated. The total number of FWM products because of the interaction of N number of channels is,
Total no. of FWM Products =
2 3
2
1
N N

Each of the newly generated sideband frequency takes power from of the main channel frequency
spectrum, thus the available power at the receiver get reduced. So power penalty increases as the total no.
of channels increase. And this increase in power penalty due to FWM effect is proportional to the cube of
transmitting power.
IV. EFFECT OF CHANNEL SPACING IN DWDM SYSTEM
Due to the increase in demand we need to move from the earlier WDM system to DWDM system. In
DWDM system channel spacing is 50GHz or less than that whereas WDM system channel spacing was
100GHz or above. This reduction in frequency spacing has some obvious effect over the DWDM system.
As we can see from the fig 3, power penalty increases as we tends to smaller channel spacing.


Fig 3: Effect of channel spacing in DWDM system


V. ERROR PERFORMANCE OF DWDM SYSTEM
We observed the effect of channel spacing and bitrate on BER for different received power in DWDM
system. In fig 4, we can see that the greater the channel spacing, the lesser the input power is needed for
expected BER of 10
-9
. Smaller channel spacing leads to greater power penalty. So, for BER of 10
-9
,
greater input power is needed for smaller channel spacing like 25GHz,50GHz while relatively low power
is needed for channel spacing of 100GHz or greater.


Fig. 4 Relationship between BER and received power for different channel spacing
System error performance at higher bitrates degrades. From our model it is found that BER of 10
-9
is
achievable for 40Gbps/channel and 160Gbps/channel system at received power of -22dBm and -18dBm.
So the higher the bitrate is, the higher received power per channel, i.e. higher input power is necessary.
However the best BER of 10
-8
is possible for ultra-high speed of 320Gbps/channel system. We consider a
100km DCF fiber for our model in fig 5 below.

Fig. 5 Relationship between BER and received power for different bitrates
Fiber with residual dispersion performes better than DCF fibers. For same input power, fibers with
residual dispersion has lower BER than DCF fiber. From fig 6, it is obvious that fibers with negative
residual dispersion performes better than other fibers.

FWM generation efficiency decreases with the increase of fiber chromatic dispersion, it is clear that
dispersive fibers are better than low dispersion fibers, since they reduce FWM effect and thereby enhance
the system performance. But, on the other hand, chromatic dispersion produces pulse broadening, i.e., ISI
which ultimately badly impairs the performance. So, we must apply some compensation mechanism to
keep overall dispersion as minimum as possible.


Fig. 6 Relationship between BER and received power for different residual dispersion



Fig 7 shows the performance of SSMF fiber over DCF fiber.And due to high dispersion of SSMF error
performance of it is better than DCF fiber.



Fig. 7 Relationship between BER and received power for different fibers


Fiber length also plays an important role on the sysytem performance. As the length increases, error
performance degrades. Its obvious that for greater length the power penalty increases, as the relation
between power penalty due to FWM effect and channel effective length L
eff
is,
power penalty L
eff

2


From fig 8, its evident that shorter channel length has better perfomance. Error rate increases as the
channel length increases.


Fig. 8 Relationship between BER and received power for different channel lengths



Multichannel systems face the severe effect of FWM while single channel systems face shot noise,
thermal noise and other non-linearity like SBS, SRS only. At low signal power, the FWM noise is small
compared to the shot noise and thermal noise and the performance is limited by these noises. As the signal
power increases, the BER decreases. As signal power increases further, the FWM noise becomes dominant
and the BER starts to increase. That is, the system is impaired by FWM interference and the performance
is degraded for large power levels. As single channel system does not face any FWM effect, its error
performance improves as input power increases. While for multichannel system error performance
improves as the input power increases to a certain threshold value. For our case, it is -17dBm which can be
observed from fig 9. After this threshold value FWM effect becomes very dominant and error performance
degrades as input power increases.

Fig. 9 Relationship between BER and received power for single channel and multichannel
VI. ALLOWABLE INPUT POWERS FOR VARIOUS FIBER
As we discussed earlier, fibers with high dispersion parameter has a better control over FWM effect. So
NZDSF and SSMF fibers have a lower power penalty profile than DSF and DCF fibers. From fig 10
below, we observe that SSMF and NZDSF fibers have very low power penalty than DSF fiber for same
input power.

Fig. 10 Relationship between power penalty and input power for different types of fiber

VII. CONCLUSION
Error performances in DWDM system for high-speed communication have been observed and analyses
have been made in our work. It has been found that very high speed e.g. 160Gbps, 320Gbps can be used
for DWDM communication system. It may require some extra considerations for error reduction, but it
will improve the data transmission efficiency by a huge extent. By consulting our work, a decent idea for
taking any decision regarding DWDM system can be taken. This work may eventually help explain other
phenomena observed during DWDM system performances.