Reduction of nonlinear impairments in fiber transmission system using fiber and/or transmitter diversity

A multi-fiber architecture is proposed to mitigate the nonlinear impairments in fiber-optic systems. The power launched to each fiber is reduced in multi-fiber architecture as compared to the case of single fiber leading to reduction in nonlinear impairments. The optical pulses propagating in the fibers undergo different amount of phase shifts and timing delays. Optical and electrical equalization techniques to compensate for these channel effects are discussed. Our numerical simulation results show that for unrepeatered systems, the performance (Q factor) is improved by 6.2dB using 8-fiber configuration as compared to single-fiber system. In addition, for multi-span system, the transmission reach at a bit error rate (BER) of 2.1×10−3 is quadrupled in 8-fiber configuration.