Optical Fibres And Amplifiers For Wdm Systems

The development of optical-fibre amplifiers allowed a dramatic increase in the capacity of optical transmission systems while reducing system costs. Capacity increase is possible because the high output powers afforded by optical fibre amplifiers support higher bit rates, while their broad bandwidth and slow gain dynamics allow multichannel operation. This benefit comes at the expense of having to manage signal-to-noise ratio degradations due to the accumulation of amplifer noise and dispersion distortions accumulated over the total system link. This paper summarizes these state-of-the-art components looks at future developments.