Optical Fiber Effects

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission heavily depends on the fiber type that is used, and the related transmission effects and characteristics. Single‐mode fibers are transmission systems that show frequency dependence (i.e., the pulse response is not the Dirac delta function), time variance, and weak nonlinear behavior. The resulting transmission impairments are as follows: Linear effects such as, attenuation (intrinsic loss, bending loss), polarization‐dependent loss (PDL), chromatic dispersion (CD) due to material waveguide, and profile dispersion. These dispersion mechanisms lead to group‐velocity dispersion (GVD) and dispersion slope or higher order CD. Nonlinear effects include self‐phase modulation (SPM), cross‐phase modulation (XPM, IXPM), four‐wave mixing (FWM, IFWM), modulation instability, nonlinear phase noise (NLPN), cross‐polarization modulation (XPolM), stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). For WDM long‐haul transmission, this chapter considers all these effects and their interactions.