System applications of dispersion-compensation techniques in upgrading interoffice 1310 nm-optimized fiber networks

In 1550 nm transmission over existing 1310 nm-optimized standard single-mode fiber, dispersion can become a limitation at high bit rates and long distances. By using an optical equalizer fiber for dispersion-compensation and erbium-doped fiber amplifiers for loss-compensation, we show that at 2.5 Gb/s, dispersion-compensation up to 200 km of standard single-mode fiber can be achieved with both single-optical-channel and multi-wavelength WDM systems. The technique allows us to adopt a strategy for upgrading the existing 1310 nm-optimized interoffice fiber networks to higher capacity multi-gigabit systems. Such upgrades may be needed over longer fiber links in diverse routing and passive SONET protection rings in future survivable interoffice Gb/s networks