3.28 Tb/s (82x40 Gb/s) Transmission over 3x100km Nonzero-Dipersion Fiber Using Dual C and L-band Hybrid Raman/Erbium-doped Inline Amplifiers

Recent experimental demonstrations of ultra high capacity WDM transmission systems with aggregate capacities of more than 1 Tb/s have been based on either dual C and L band transmission /1/-/5/, distributed Raman amplificaiton, /2/,/5/-/6/, or 40 Gb/s line rates, /1/,/5/,/7/7. In this paper we demonstrate a record capacity of 3.28 Tb/s by, for the first time, combining these three techniques in one system. The 3.28 Tb/s is comprised of forty 100-Ghz spaced WDM channels in C-band and forty-two 100-GHz spaced WDM channels in L-band. The eighty-two WDM channels are each encoded with 40 Gb/s NRZ data using a PRBS word length of 2 sup (31) -1 and transmitted over three 100km spans of a prototype TrueWave(R) fiber with ultra low dispersion slope. BER's of less than 10 sup (-10) were obtained without the use of FEC for all eighty-two WDM channels after transmission. High dispersion slope dispersion compensating fiber (HS-DCF) was incorporated into the inline amplifiers, to achieve a variation in the accumulated dispersion after 300km transmission as low as 60ps/nm and 140ps/nm over the entire C-band and L-band respectively. The excellent dispersion slope match between the transmission fiber and athe HS-DSF in C-band is sufficient for 40Gb/s transmission over 300km without requiring per-channel post dispersion optimization.