Reflection-induced penalty in Raman amplifiers

We describe the measurement of reflection-induced penalty in Raman amplifier systems. A 1-dB penalty in our optically preamplified receiver was observed when the reflection-induced in-band crosstalk power was 25 dB below the signal power. We expect that this result will apply to in-band scattering arising from combinations of discrete-discrete scattering and discrete-Rayleigh scattering, although the measurements described here were performed for the two impairments separately.