A point-to-point high-capacity WDM link.

For long-haul fiber links in a telecommunication network, the role of WDM is simply to increase the total bit rate .

The output of several transmitters, each operating at its own carrier frequency (or wavelength), is multiplexed together.

Multichannel point-to-point fiber link. Separate transmitterreceiver pairs are used to send and receive the signal at different wavelengths

The multiplexed signal is launched into the optical fiber for transmission to the other end . A demultiplexer sends each channel to its own receiver.

 When N channels at bit rates B1, B2, . . ., and BN are transmitted simultaneously over a fiber of length L The total bit ratedistance product, BL, becomes BL = (B1+B2+ +BN)L For equal bit rates, the system capacity is enhanced by a factor of N.

 The ultimate capacity of WDM fiber links depends on the following

how closely channels can be packed in the wavelength domain.

The minimum channel spacing is limited by inter channel crosstalk. Channel spacing should exceed 2B at the bit rate B. This requirement wastes considerable bandwidth. It is common to introduce a measure of the spectral efficiency of a WDM system as
ch

s = B/ch
Attempts are made to make s as large as possible.

 The channel frequencies (or wavelengths) of WDM systems have been standardized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
The standard is on a 100-GHz grid in the frequency range 186196 THz (covering the C and L bands in the wavelength range15301612 nm). For this reason, channel spacing for most commercial WDM systems is 100 GHz (0.8 nm at 1552 nm). This value leads to only 10% spectral efficiency at the bit rate of 10 Gb/s.

 More recently, ITU has specified WDM channels with a frequency spacing of 50 GHz.

The use of this channel spacing in combination with the bit rate of40 Gb/s has the potential of increasing the spectral efficiency to 80%.

WDM systems were moving in that direction in 2001.

Capacity of WDM systems

The low-loss region of dry fibers (e.g, fibers with reduced OH-absorption near 1.4 m) extends over 300 nm in the wavelength region covering 1.31.6 m.

The minimum channel spacing can be as small as 50 GHz or 0.4 nm for 40-Gb/s channels.

Since 750 channels can be accommodated over the 300-nm bandwidth, the resulting effective bit rate can be as large as 30 Tb/s. If we assume that the WDM signal can be transmitted over 1000 km by using optical amplifiers with dispersion management.
The effective BL product may exceed 30,000 (Tb/s)km with the use of WDM technology.

 This should be contrasted with the thirdgeneration commercial lightwave systems, which transmitted a single channel over 80 km or so at a bit rate of up to 2.5 Gb/s , resulting in BL values of at most 0.2 (Tb/s)-km.

Clearly, the use of WDM has the potential of improving the performance of modern lightwave systems by a factor of more than 100,000.

Factors limiting bandwidth

In practice, many factors limit the use of the entire low-loss window. most optical amplifiers have a finite bandwidth. The number of channels is often limited by the bandwidth over which amplifiers can provide nearly uniform gain. The bandwidth of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers is limited to 40 nm even with the use of gainflattening techniques. The use of Raman amplification has extended the bandwidth to near 100 nm.

factors that limit the number of channels

(i) Stability and tunability of distributed feedback (DFB) semiconductor lasers (ii) signal degradation during transmission because of various nonlinear effects,and (iii) interchannel crosstalk during demultiplexing.

High-capacity WDM fiber link requirements

many high-performance components such as : transmitters integrating multiple DFB lasers channel multiplexers and demultiplexers with add-drop capability large-bandwidth constant-gain amplifiers.

 The use of WDM had improved the capacity of undersea systems by a factor of 10,000 by 2001. On the commercial side, WDM systems with a capacity of 40 Gb/s (16 channels at 2.5 Gb/s or 4 channels at 10 Gb/s) were available in 1996.
The 16-channel system covered a wavelength range of about 12 nm in the 1.55-m region with a channel spacing of 0.8 nm.

 WDM fiber links operating at 160 Gb/s (16 channels at 10 Gb/s) appeared in 1998. By 2001,WDM systems with a capacity of 1.6 Tb/s (realized by multiplexing160 channels, each operating at 10 Gb/s) were available. Moreover, systems with a 6.4-Tb/s capacity were in the development stage (160 channels at 40 Gb/s). This is in contrast with the 10-Gb/s capacity of the third-generation systems available before the advent of the WDM technique. The use of WDM had improved the capacity of commercial terrestrial systems by a factor of more than 6000 by 2001.