Performance evaluation of very long span direct detection intensity and polarization modulated systems

In this paper long distances very high capacity NRZ optical transmission systems adopting direct detection are considered in links with a low average chromatic dispersion. Particular attention is devoted to polarization modulated (PM-DD) systems. Polarization modulated systems results to he more degraded with respect to intensity modulated (IM-DD) systems by the light depolarization induced by the interplay among the Kerr effect, the ASE noise of the optical amplifiers and the polarization mode dispersion. The light depolarization is particularly strong in conditions of large spectral broadening that are met when the chromatic dispersion value is maintained very low along the link. On the other hand the use of a fluctuating chromatic dispersion with a mean value equal to zero, whereas the local dispersion is different from zero, shows the double advantage to reduce the chromatic dispersion impairments and to limit the spectral broadening. The advantages offered by this dispersion management technique have been already shown in several experiments for IM-DD systems: in this work we show that this technique is very important also for PM-DD systems since the limitation in the spectral broadening reduces the light depolarization. We show that adopting a suitable dispersion management and an opportune preamplifier optical filter transmissions at 5 Gb/s can be attained in transoceanic links by means of FM-DD systems.