Characterization of an optical communication system utilizing dispersion compensating fiber and nonlinear optical effects

Nonlinear effects and dispersion in optical fibers have become an area of academic research and of great importance in optical fiber based systems. Presence of these nonlinear effects and dispersion in the optical fiber communication systems adversely affect the communication between two receiving ends. In the present investigation, the authors are reporting the design and analysis of a dispersion compensated link of single mode fiber (SMF) for total span of 100Km at 1550nm. The effect due to nonlinear dependence of the refractive index on pulse intensity and power (self phase modulation) for different modulation schemes NRZ Rectangular, NRZ Raised Cosine, RZ Rectangular, RZ Soliton is analyzed. The degradation of the performance of fiber optic link due to the nonlinear effects arise in presence of booster amplifier is simulated and results are discussed. The above investigations help to reduce the length of dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) and thereby the cost of implementation will be low without compromising the quality of transmission and reception. The variation of BER was studied with respect to bit rate, fiber length and booster gain. The simulation was repeated for different values of booster gain and various modulation schemes. The simulation studies are carried out using OPTSIM software from RSoft Inc.