Measurement of the effect of fiber nonlinearities on signal variance and pulse distortion and comparison with models

Summary form only given. Adjusting dispersion to reduce signal variance can increase pulse distortion and the latter appears to be a much stronger effect. The previous experimental work was for a few amplifier spans and was done under cw conditions so pulse distortion was not discussed. In this work nonlinear effects are investigated using a 4760-km 8-channel WDM test bed operating at 4.98 Gbit/s. No polarization scrambling was used because we wished to compare measurements with existing theory, which does not include this effect.