Optical Fiber Technology 13 (2007) 5155 www.elsevier.

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Statistical property of intra-channel four-wave mixing in RZ-DPSK transmission systems

Fan Zhang a,b , Christian-A. Bunge a, , Klaus Petermann a
a Fachgebiet Hochfrequenztechnik, Technische Universitt Berlin, D-10587 Berlin, Germany b National Laboratory on Local Fiber-Optic Communication Networks & Advanced Optical Communication Systems, Peking University, Beijing 100871,

Peoples Republic of China Received 26 January 2006; revised 1 June 2006 Available online 22 August 2006

Abstract The statistical property of intra-channel four-wave-mixing (IFWM) is studied numerically for return-to-zero differential-phase-shift keying transmission. The distributions of IFWM-induced pulse power and phase uctuations depend on the relative strength of pulse broadening and nonlinear interactions, which can be characterized with a dimensionless parameter. We thus offer a general criterion to understand the stochastic nature of IFWM effect. 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Nonlinear effects; Optical transmission systems; Four-wave-mixing; Intra-channel effects; DPSK transmission

Recently, the return-to-zero differential-phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) format has been widely studied for high-speed light-wave transmission [1]. In such systems, the optical pulses are dispersed and overlap strongly during propagation. Nonlinear pulse interactions lead to intra-channel cross-phase modulation (IXPM) and four-wave mixing (IFWM) [2]. The interaction between amplied spontaneous emission (ASE) and ber Kerr effect causes nonlinear phase noise [3]. Without ASE, IXPM has no effect on DPSK signals due to equal energy in all time slots [4,5]. IFWM, however, can add led distortion to each DPSK RZ pulse [2,4,5]. IFWM in 40 Gb/s RZ-DPSK systems has been investigated through an analytical method [4,5]. In this letter, by directly solving the nonlinear Schrdinger equation (NLSE), the stochastic behavior of IFWM effect is numerically studied in more detail. We demonstrate that the statistical property of IFWM distortion depends on the relative strength of pulse broadening and nonlinear interactions, which can be characterized with a dimensionless parameter. Consider a Gaussian pulse train with bit length Tb and 1/epulse width T0 , the kth pulse is uk = Ak exp[(t kTb )2 /2T02 ],
* Corresponding author. Fax: +49 30 314 24 626.

where Ak = A0 corresponding to a phase modulation by either 0 or . According to a perturbation analysis, the peak amplitude of IFWM product generated after nonlinear transmission over a ber of length L and attenuation after full (linear) dispersion compensation is given by [2,4,5]
L

uk (L, t = kTb ) = j
l+mn=k

Al Am A n
0

exp(z) 1 + 2j R + 3R 2 dz. (1)

exp

3(l n)(m n)Tb2 (1 + 3j R)T02

(l m)2 Tb2 T02 (1 + 2j R + 3R 2 )

E-mail address: christian-alexander.bunge@tu-berlin.de (C.-A. Bunge). 1068-5200/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.yofte.2006.07.004

IFWM is contributed from the l, m, and nth pulses with m = k and l = k. is the nonlinear coefcient. R = 2 z/T02 with 2 group velocity dispersion. In a highly dispersive ber, R is approximately the broadening ratio of the pulse width. The previous studies [4,5] investigated the basic properties of IFWM effect using an analytical model based on Eq. (1). A correlation between IFWM-induced phase uctuations of two consecutive pulses is observed. Equation (1) can only calculate the peak-amplitude deviation in the center of the bit slot [5], so the detailed information of IFWM degradation may be lost. Moreover, the analyt-

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F. Zhang et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 13 (2007) 5155

Table 1 The corresponding values of B/fd for several ber dispersions Fiber dispersion (ps/nm/km) 4 8 16 B/fd 40 Gb/s 1.49 2.11 2.98 80 Gb/s 2.98 4.22 5.96 160 Gb/s 5.96 8.44 11.93

ical method still requires extensive numerical calculations of many combinations of bit patterns. This approach is quite time consuming, thus numerical simulation of NLSE is necessary for accurately predicting system performance. For high-speed transmission at 40 Gb/s or above, the bit sequence should be long enough and contain sufcient bit patterns to capture all the nonlinear interaction components [6]. In our investigation, a Gaussian pulse train of 216 pulses is launched with initial pulse width T0 = 5, 2.5, and 1.25 ps for 40, 80, and 160 Gb/s, respectively, indicating a duty cycle of 33%. The pulse train is a phase-modulated De Bruijn bit sequence (DBBS). For 40 Gb/s, a DBBS of such length should be long enough for the practical ber link dispersion with a post-compensating system map. For higher bit rate operation, it is creditable for ber dispersion D < 10 ps/nm/km (80 Gb/s) and D < 2.5 ps/nm/km (160 Gb/s). A length longer than 216 is out of the computer capacity. In this paper, we assume a transmission line consisting of N 80 km identical sections. Each section includes a lumped amplier and an ideal (i.e., linear and without loss) dispersioncompensating module in a post-compensating scheme. The ber attenuation and nonlinearity are = 0.2 dB/km and = 1.32/W/km. Due to the identical accumulated dispersion within each section, IFWM products add coherently span after span. The stochastic nature of IFWM effect should be the same in each span. Throughout this letter, the averaged input power Pave is set to 0 dB m, and the transmission extends over one 80 km span. The amplier is set noiseless to consider only IFWM effect. Without ASE, SPM and IXPM have negligible effect on DPSK signals and the system performance is mainly degraded by IFWM. From Eq. (1), uk is solely inuenced by pulse broadening R and ber loss . In order to describe the nonlinear pulse interaction more generally, we introduce the concept of nonlinear diffusion bandwidth [7] fd = /|42 |, which describes the relative strength of nonlinear interactions and ber dispersion. Noting that B is the bit rate, the ratio of B/fd is a normalized parameter that can characterize transmission regime. Table 1 shows the corresponding values of B/fd for different bit rates and several typical ber dispersions. A bit sequence length of 216 is valid for B/fd < 4.72 independently of the bit rate. By transmitting such a bit sequence, we obtain 216 samples to study IFWM statistics. To quantify nonlinear distortion, IFWM impairment is measured by the deviation of both pulse power and phase. Figure 1a shows the normalized standard deviation (STD) of IFWM-induced differential phase variations between two consecutive pulses as a function of the dimensionless parameter

Fig. 1. Standard deviation of (a) IFWM-induced differential phase and (b) IFWM power jitter as a function of dimensionless parameter B/fd .

B/fd . Figure 1b shows the corresponding power uctuation. IFWM is normalized with reThe differential phase STD of diff spect to the mean nonlinear phase shift NL = N Pave Leff . Leff 1/ is the effective length in each span. The curves for IFWM and different bit rates overlap with each other. Both diff IFWM power uctuation only depend on the ratio B/fd . Fiber dispersion reduces the pulse amplitude, but increases the number of interacting bits. Therefore, IFWM distortion keeps increasing, but approaches saturation at large B/fd . At 40 Gb/s, IFWM diff increases sharply as D grows larger than 7 ps/nm/km and much more slowly for higher values, which agrees with IFWM Hos work [8]. At 80 Gb/s, however, diff shows the increase IFWM increases for D < 8 ps/nm/km, while at 160 Gb/s, diff sharply for D < 2 ps/nm/km. Overall, this can be stated for all IFWM bit rates: diff increases sharply for B/fd < 2 and decreases slightly for B/fd > 4.22. Figure 1 offers a general picture of IFWM strength in RZDPSK systems. However, the STD is not enough to illustrate the stochastic nature of intra-channel nonlinear effect. We thus use a graphical representation (Figs. 24) to show IFWM statistics. Figures 2 and 3 show the histogram of the pulse power and phase deviation, respectively. Figure 4 shows the histogram of the differential phase deviation, which is the most concerned parameter in DPSK systems. Both the power uctuation and the phase deviation are complex and asymmetrical. The differential phase deviation is symmetrical, but cannot by expressed by a simple function. As the phase deviation of the adjacent pulses are correlated with each other [4,5], the differential phase

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Fig. 2. Histogram of normalized pulse power. (a) B/fd = 1.49, (b) 2.11, (c) 2.98, (d) 4.22.

Fig. 3. Histogram of the phase deviation. (a) B/fd = 1.49, (b) 2.11, (c) 2.98, (d) 4.22.

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F. Zhang et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 13 (2007) 5155

Fig. 4. Histogram of the differential phase deviation. (a) B/fd = 1.49, (b) 2.11, (c) 2.98, (d) 4.22.

Fig. 5. Probability density of the differential phase deviation. (a) B/fd = 2.98, (b) 4.22, (c) 4.72. The solid line is a tting of Gaussian distribution.

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deviation is reduced accordingly and shows a different distribution compared with the phase deviation. The distributions in Figs. 24 only depend on the dimensionless ratio of B/fd . For example, the statistics shown in Figs. 2c4c, can be obtained for a ber with D = 16 ps/nm/km operating at 40 Gb/s or with D = 4 ps/nm/km at 80 Gb/s, since both of them correspond to B/fd = 2.98. Although all results have been obtained for input average input powers of 0 dB m, the qualitative behavior of the system remains the same for higher input powers. As one can see from Eq. (1), power uctuations due to IFWM are proportional to P 3/2 , the phase uctuations and differential phase uctuations are proportional to P , so that the phase uctuations normalized to the average nonlinear phase shift remain the same for all input powers. The histograms of power, phase, and differential phase variations remain their shapes independently of the input power. Comparing Figs. 4a4d, the distribution of the differential phase deviation has a wider spreading tail with the increasing of B/fd . Consequently, IFWM leads to serious performance degradation for highly dispersive transmission (i.e., B/fd > 2). Figure 5 shows the probability density function (PDF) of the differential phase for B/fd = 2.98, 4.22, and 4.72. Gaussian distribution is shown for comparison. The PDF in Fig. 5a, which corresponds to the standard single-mode ber (typical value D = 16 ps/nm/km) operating at 40 Gb/s, is quite similar to Gaussian. In Figs. 5b and 5c, however, the PDF is signicantly different. For all these three cases, the Gaussian approximation underestimates the tail spreading. Figure 5c has a similar distribution compared to Fig. 5b. The PDF tail spreading is only slightly larger than that in Fig. 5b. Noting the picture of IFWM force in Fig. 1, it is reasonable to say IFWM degradation in RZ-DPSK systems tends to saturate at large B/fd . In conclusion, IFWM effect in high-speed RZ-DPSK systems are numerically studied for a full post-compensating scheme in each transmission span. The statistical properties of IFWM effect depend on the relative strength of pulse broad-

ening and nonlinear interactions. IFWM distortion increases sharply for B/fd < 2 and is saturated at large B/fd . For highly dispersive transmission (i.e., B/fd > 2), the rapid spreading of the distribution tail will result in serious performance degradation. Here we choose the span length of 80 km as an example. Typically, the ber span is much longer than its respective effective length (1/). Given a post-compensating scheme and a similar Leff , the nonlinear strengths for different span spacing are nearly the same. Therefore, our conclusion should be valid for the most practical span lengths. Acknowledgment The authors acknowledge the nancial support of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. References
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