Different schemes of dispersion management for cascaded transmission s
ystems composed of standard monomode fibers (SMFs) and dispersion comp
ensating fibers have been studied considering the most essential bound
ary conditions for practical network design. Alternating ordering of t
he compensation sections is found to improve considerably the eye open
ing penalty for high amplifier spacings of 120 km. (C) 1997 Elsevier S
cience B.V.