Power control strategies and network performance assessment for C+L+S multiband optical transport

Abstract

Spatial-division multiplexing (SDM) and band-division multiplexing (BDM) have emerged as solutions to expand the capacity of existing C-band wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical systems and to deal with increasing traffic demands. An important difference between these two approaches is that BDM solutions enable data transmission over unused spectral bands of already-deployed optical fibers, whereas SDM solutions require the availability of additional fibers to replicate C-band WDM transmission. On the other hand, to properly design a multiband optical line system (OLS), the following fiber propagation effects have been taken into account in the analysis: (i) stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), which induces considerable power transfer among bands; (ii) frequency dependence of fiber parameters such as attenuation, dispersion, and nonlinear coefficients; and (iii) utilization of optical amplifiers with different doping materials, thus leading to different characteristics, e.g., in terms of noise figures. This work follows a two-step approach: First, we aim at maximizing and flattening the quality of transmission (QoT) when adding L- and -bands to a traditional WDM OLS where only the C-band is deployed. This is achieved by applying a multiband optimized optical power control for BDM upgrades, which consists of setting a pre-tilt and power offset in the line amplifiers, thus achieving a considerable increase in QoT, both in average value and flatness. Second, the SDM approach is used as a benchmark for the BDM approach by assessing network performance on three network topologies with different geographical footprints. We show that, with optical power properly optimized, BDM may enable an increase in network traffic, slightly less than an SDM upgrade but still comparable, without requiring additional fiber cables.