A simple channel plan to reduce effects of nonlinearities in dense WDM systems

Summary form only given. Nonlinear effects in transmission fibers are in general detrimental to the operation of high data rate dense WDM systems. In systems employing NZDSF fiber the small local dispersion of the transmission fiber increases four wave mixing (FWM) and cross phase modulation (XPM) limiting transmission distance and system capacity. Several choices are available to reduce these nonlinear effects, including, operating the system at lower average powers to reduce FWM and XPM, employing an unequally spaced channel plan (USCP) to reduce FWM, using dispersion management to reduce XPM, and using larger channel spacing to reduce XPM and FWM. In this paper a simple channel plan scheme is presented which is based on selective removal of certain channels in an equally spaced channel plan (ESCP) grid to reduce nonlinear effects. This scheme has a low BEF of 1.4, where the BEF is defined as the bandwidth ratio between USCP and ESCP for a given number of channels.