RIGOROUS APPROACH TO PERFORMANCE MODELING OF NONLINEAR, OPTICALLY AMPLIFIED IM DD SYSTEMS/

A method is reported that, through a rigorous treatment of the combine d effect of chromatic dispersion, self-phase modulation and in-line am plifier noise, provides a sound basis for quantitative performance ana lysis in long-haul systems. This is achieved by using a moment generat ing function based approach in which the effect of intersymbol interfe rence and the randomness of waveform distortion are fully accommodated . Additionally, an improved bound on the bit error rate for optically preamplified receivers is proposed which is tighter than the Chernoff and modified Chernoff bounds and is independent of gain for all gains of practical interest. With the aid of this new bound, the influence o f chromatic dispersion, self-phase modulation and in-line amplifier no ise as a function of various system parameters is examined and quantif ied.