Abstract

The high-bit-rate and long span optical-fiber transmission system requires sufficient loss and dispersion margin for transmission. Recent multiple-gigabit transmission experiments have demonstrated that erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA's) can make the allowable loss margin larger in the 1.55- μm wavelength region. However, in this high-bit-rate region, the transmission systems suffer from dispersion limitations when 1.3- μm zero-dispersion normal fibers (SMF) are used. For example, in 10-Gb/s systems, even with an optimized LiNo₃ external modulator, the transmission span has been limited to ~50 km by the fiber dispersion¹ The same limitation applies to systems that use the dispersion compensation technique called prechirping technique.² This paper proposes a modified prechirp technique, which makes large dispersion compensation possible by optically multiplexing the prechirped return-to-zero (RZ) signals. We have carried out a 10-Gb/s, 100-km SMF transmission experiment with this technique.

© 1991 Optical Society of America