Recent Advances in Discrete Raman Amplifiers and their Applications to Wideband Optical Networks

We consider recent advances in the design of discrete Raman amplifiers (DRAs) and their potential application to wideband optical networks. The performance of dual-stage DRAs is compared with conventional single-stage designs. The impact of Raman gain fibre nonlinearity in single-stage and dual-stage DRAs is evaluated and compared with conventional EDFA based systems.