Analysis of Crosstalk and Noise Limitation in a WDM Network with MWSF Based Limited Wavelength Interchange Optical Cross Connect

This paper investigates the combined effect of crosstalk and noise on Bit Error Rate (BER) of a multi-hop Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) transmission network with limited-wavelength-interchanging cross connects (L-WIXC). An improved mathematical modeling is developed for the analysis of network performance in terms of BER depending on prominent system parameters like number of hops, number of input fibers and number of wavelength channels per fiber. The power penalty due to accumulated crosstalk and noise at a given BER of 10
^-9
is analyzed and the optimum system design parameters are also determined numerically. Results show that there is a significant power penalty due to accumulated crosstalk depending on the number of hops. Maximum allowable number of hops at an allowable power penalty of the order of 12 dB depending on number of wavelength channels and number of input fibers are also evaluated.