Transmission properties of chirped return-to-zero pulses and nonlinear intersymbol interference in 10 Gb/s WDM transmission

Computer simulations are used to analyze the evolution of chirped return-to-zero pulses in long-haul dispersion managed 10 Gb/s systems. We demonstrate that pulses in the channels that are offset from system's zero dispersion suffer significant spreading over several bit periods. In the presence of nonlinearity this effect sets the usable bandwidth of the system.