Impact of polarization mode dispersion and nonlinear effect on 40 Gbit/s dense wavelength division multiplexing system

Abstract

Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system is the ultimate selection as an optical communication system because of its high speeds and capacities. However, the fiber nonlinear effects and polarization mode dispersion severely limit the performance of the system when signal propagates at 40 Gbit/s in a single channel. The coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations of a single channel in DWDM, which are all considered factors of group velocity dispersion (GVD), self phase modulation (SPM), cross phase modulation (XPM), four wave mixing (FWM) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD), are derived, while their number results are obtained with extended split-step Fourier method. Finally, to analyze the impacts of the fiber nonlinear effects and PMD on the optical communication system, the simulated results of an 8×40 Gbit/s DWDM system are discussed under different conditions respectively.