Repeater spacing of 280 Mbit/s single-mode fiber-optic transmission system using 1.55 µm laser diode source

This paper describes an attainable repeater spacing for a high bit-rate single-mode fiber-optic transmission in the 1.55 μm wavelength region where laser mode partition noise comes to be significant. An expression for evaluating mode partition noise is given as the form involving the influence of laser spectral fluctuations under high bit-rate modulation, together with the intersymbol interference and the equalized pulse shape in tile optical receiver. After the validity of its numerical results is confirmed experimentally, the resulting evaluation of laser mode partition noise is connected to a systematic discussion on the attainable repeater spacing of a 280 Mbit/s fiber-optic transmission system operating at 1.55 μm, along with fiber loss versus dispersion tradeoffs. This discussion permits the attainable repeater spacing to be 60-70 km for the combination of a laser diode with 1.5-2.0 nm spectrum broadening and a fiber with the loss of 0.5 dB/km and the dispersion of 4-6 ps/km - nm.