Comparison between NRZ and RZ signal formats for in-line amplifier transmission in the zero-dispersion regime

Nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) and return-to-zero (RZ) signal formats are experimentally and numerically compared for single-channel long-distance transmission in an in-line amplifier system with dispersion management providing average zero dispersion and local nonzero dispersion at an interval equal to the in-line amplifier spacing. Among a 20-ps RZ signal, a 40-ps RZ signal, and an NRZ signal transmitted in 10 Gb/s straight-line experiments, the last signal achieves the longest transmission distance of 6000 km while the others are limited to 4400 km. Numerical simulations explain these results well and show that, along with linear amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) accumulation, signal waveform distortion due to the combined effect of higher order group-velocity dispersion (GVD) and self-phase modulation (SPM) dominates the performance. Nonlinear optical noise enhancement is not obvious because of the fiber dispersion arrangement. Signals with large pulse widths are less affected by the combined effect, while small-width signals yield superior initial signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as determined by optical noise. A detailed simulation indicates that a pulse width of about 60 ps is optimum for long distance transmission under the fiber dispersion arranged in this paper