Abstract

One of the important applications of Er-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) is the linear repeater (L-REP). It is independent of the operational bit-rate. However, the natural consequence of analog repeaters, noise accumulation can be a serious problem if many of them are deployed in a long regenerator span [1]. Increasing the output power is an impractical solution because it leads to nonlinear optical degradation caused by effects such as Self Phase Modulation and Stimulated Brillouin Scattering. Overcoming such degradation is a crucial issue, especially for long span transmission systems. Forward error correcting (FEC) coding is one of the more practical candidates.

© 1994 Optical Society of America