Dispersion and dispersion slope tolerance of 160-Gb/s systems, considering the temperature dependence of chromatic dispersion

With increasing data rate the signal degradation due to dispersion is getting worse and dispersion slope has to be taken into account. In this letter, we investigate theoretically and numerically the impact of dispersion and dispersion slope on transmission performance including the effect of temperature variations of the fiber and thus the resulting variation of fiber dispersion. The simulations carried out, show tight dispersion and dispersion slope tolerances for 160-Gb/s systems. A controlled adaptive dispersion compensation is mandatory for high speed optical transmission systems.