Nonlinear amplification of noise in fibers with dispersion and its impact in optically amplified systems

The effect of nonlinear interaction between amplified spontaneous emission noise and dispersive optical fiber material has been investigated analytically. A transfer matrix formulation is used to solve the nonlinear propagation equation. A continuous-wave (CW) format of the input optical signal isolates the effect of nonlinear noise amplification from the signal self-phase modulation. The impact of noise amplification in the performance of an intensity-modulation-direct-detection (IM-DD) system is also evaluated.