Nonlinear timing jitter in an installed fiber network with balanced dispersion compensation

We present field measurements of timing jitter induced by intrachannel cross-phase modulation on an installed terrestrial fiber link. The measured jitter is strongly dependent on the arrangement of dispersion-compensating fiber, in excellent qualitative agreement with numerical simulations. We find that balancing the dispersion compensation yields significant benefits, even for an inhomogeneous fiber path. We show that numerical simulation combined with experimental results is a practical way to develop a link model, even when the system loss cannot be completely characterized experimentally.