Assessment of the performance limitations of a dense WDM metropolitan network in the 1300 nm window using semiconductor optical amplifiers and Raman amplifiers

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission in the 1.3 /spl mu/m window has attracted attention recently as it provides a supplementary operating window to the already used C and L bands. Its implementation concerns not only long-haul systems, but also metropolitan area networks (MANs) due to the multiplicity of differentiated services, for which the capacity ranges from few tens of Mbit/s to 2.5 Gbit/s. A need for new dense WDM (DWDM) dedicated optical amplifiers, working at 1.3 /spl mu/m has been identified, and very promising results have been presented recently using both semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) and Raman amplifiers. In this study, we assess the limitations of systems composed of a large number of such amplifiers, cascaded, in the specific case of a metropolitan network, evaluating the performance degradations due to amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and nonlinear effects.