abstract
- We have investigated an optical back propagation (OBP) method to compensate for propagation impairments in fiber optic networks with lumped Erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and/or distributed Raman amplification. An OBP module consists of an optical phase conjugator (OPC), optical amplifiers and dispersion varying fibers (DVFs). We derived a semi-analytical expression that calculates the dispersion profile of DVF. The OBP module acts as a nonlinear filter that fully compensates for the nonlinear distortions due to signal propagation in a transmission fiber, and is applicable for fiber optic networks with reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs). We studied a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network with 3000 km transmission distance and 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulation. OBP brings 5.8 dB, 5.9 dB and 6.1 dB Q-factor gains over linear compensation for systems with full EDFA amplification, hybrid EDFA/Raman amplification, and full Raman amplification, respectively. In contrast, digital back propagation (DBP) or OPC-only systems provide only 0.8 ~ 1.5 dB Q-factor gains.