Dispersion compensation techniques for CATV lightwave transmission systems

Summary form only given. Analog transmission of CATV signals has made rapid strides in the past few years with the deployment of 1550 nm external modulation systems and high power optical amplifiers. Such systems have extended the reach of analog systems to over 125 km. With such long links, several linear and nonlinear mechanisms that lead to signal degradation have to be considered. These mechanisms include dispersion, double Rayleigh backscattering (DRBS), phase modulation to intensity modulation (PM-IM) conversion, SBS and SPM acting singly or in combination. Fiber nonlinearities for the most part do not degrade the CATV system distortions unless they interact with dispersion. So dispersion compensation effectively combats the effect of nonlinearities also, provided the dispersion compensation can be achieved without any additional nonlinearity. It is also theoretically possible to use dispersion as a means of combating the effect of nonlinearities. Models to show this effect will be presented at the conference, along with experimental results