Pulse Distortion and Power Penalty Induced by Sinusoidal Amplitude and Phase Response Ripples for Gaussian Pulses

The frequency responses of wavelength-selective optical components often exhibit ripples in the amplitude and/or phase. These ripples can lead to signal distortion and hence a degradation in system performance. The pulse distortion induced by sinusoidal amplitude and phase response ripples is derived for chirped and unchirped Gaussian pulses, and closed-form expressions are presented for the power penalty in system performance. The analysis shows that the amplitude and phase response ripples have a similar impact on the transmitted signal, and that the power penalty induced by these ripples depends on the chirp and pulsewidth of the transmitted signal. The combined effect of the characteristics of the transmitted signal and ripple parameters on system performance is discussed in detail. It is shown that the dependence of the maximum power penalty on the chirp parameter differs for amplitude and phase response ripples. The results of the theoretical analysis are in good agreement with numerical simulations.