Performance degradation of multiwavelength optical networks due to laser and (de)multiplexer misalignments

In this letter, we use computer simulation techniques to evaluate the performance degradation for a multiwavelength optical network with a cascade of 30 randomly misaligned (de)multiplexers. Two types of (de)multiplexers are used in the simulation and modeled as third-order and first-order Butterworth filters, both with a full width half maximum (FWHM) of 125 GHz. For WDM systems at 10 Gb/s per optical channel with 30 uniformly misaligned filters, laser misalignment tolerances (at 0.3 dB distortion-induced-eye-closure penalty) vary from /spl plusmn/30 GHz (/spl plusmn/0.24 nm) for systems using third-order Butterworth filters to /spl plusmn/20 GHz (/spl plusmn/16 mm) for systems using first-order filters.<
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