Abstract

Hybrid AM-VSB /256-QAM multichannel video lightwave transmission systems are currently considered by both the telecom and cable industries as a promising technology for delivery of analog and compressed digital video services.¹ In a hybrid system based on distributed feedback (DFB) laser transmitter, the typical power budget of ~10 dB is inadequate for applications such as long-distance video supertrunking and broadband network based on passive optical network (PON) architecture. In recent years, several studies used erbium-doped optical amplifiers (EDFAs) together with 1550-nm DFB laser transmitters to boast the link budget.^2-4 These studies, however, were focused only on the transport of pure-analog video signals. In a hybrid system, it is important to consider the interactions between the analog and digital channels.^5,6 In this work, we investigate the performance of a lightwave system employing three cascaded EDFAs to transmit multichannel hybrid AM-VSB/256-QAM digital video signals over 120 km of single-mode fiber (SMF).

© 1996 Optical Society of America