Performance investigation of MLR optical WDM network based on ITU-T conforming fibers in the presence of SRS, XPM and FWM

Abstract

This article investigates the performance degradation of a mixed line rate (MLR) optical wavelength division multiplexing network in the presence of the combined FWM, XPM and SRS effects. For performance evaluation a novel mathematical model is developed which evaluates the results in terms of quality-factor. Further, the simulations are performed (i) based on the optical frequency grid defined by the ITU-T Recommendation G.692, and (ii) considering the ITU-T compliant optical fibers viz., G.652, G. 652D, G. 653, G. 654, G.655, and LEAF. The obtained results show that among the various considered fibers and modulation format configuration cases, irrespective of spacing between the channels (i) SMF (G.652) and DSF (G.653) fibers provide the best and the worst performances, respectively, and (ii) a combination of the central channel transmitting at 40 Gbps using the duo-binary modulation format with adjacent channels transmitting at 10 Gbps using OOK modulation format, provides the best performance. However, with increase in spacing between the channels, the performance is enhanced owing to mitigation of the deleterious non-linear effects. Overall, the results clearly show that choice of the data rate of both, the central channel and its adjacent channel has a major effect on the MLR network performance.