Abstract

For full utilization of the installed base of fiber links with conventional EDFAs and NRZ intensity modulation/detection schemes, high spectral efficiency in ultradense WDM architectures is required. Non polarization interleaved systems with 0.4 bit/s/Hz (25 GHz channel spacing at 10 Gbit/s) and 0.53 bit/s/Hz (18.8 GHz channel spacing at 10 Gbit/s)¹ have been demonstrated. With such narrow channel spacing, wavelength stabilization of the channel lasers is crucial to achieving reliable operation whith the reduced guard bands. Also, use of widely tunable lasers is of great interest for reducing inventories, implementation of dynamic wavelength provisioning and simplification of network control software.

© 2002 Optical Society of America