Nonlinear Signal Degradation in Unrepeatered Optical Systems with Distributed Raman Amplification

The Kerr- related nonlinear signal distortion for unrepeatered optical links is evaluated for a 100-Gb/s single-channel scenario supported by first-order distributed Raman amplification. The results, comparing systems performance in terms of bit error rate for several optical fibers with dissimilar characteristics, indicate the importance to balance nonlinear and noise degradation to fully optimize the reach and capacity of this kind of system.