Modulational instability in multiamplified optical systems with dispersion compensation

The advent of optical amplifiers made possible repeaterless optical fibre links of thousands of kilometres. An important limiting factor in achieving such distances is the interaction between ASE noise, generated by optical amplification, and the co-propagating signal, consisting of the phenomena of modulational instability and side-band instability. This paper describes briefly the modelling of these phenomena and, through numerical simulations, verifies the influence of modulational instability on the choice of parameters such as power level, fibre group-velocity dispersion and dispersion compensation methods, allowing conclusions with direct application to the design of optical communication systems