Performance Limitations of an Optical TDM Transmission Link Caused by Fiber Chromatic Dispersion

The effect of fiber dispersion in terms of dispersion index in optical time division multiplexed (OTDM) signal is presented in this paper. In this work, a relation between the chromatic dispersion index of optical fiber with the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and bit error rate (BER) is demonstrated using a MATLAB simulation. It is shown that the BER increases when the chromatic dispersion index of optical fiber gets higher. As a result, the signal loss and error rate get enhanced. An analytical approach for 100 Gbps OTDM system has been developed and the signal characteristics is investigated in terms of SNR and BER. Several baseband channels are considered as multiplexed through time division multiplexing technique. After travelling a certain distance the light pulses get distorted from its transmitted condition and thus affects the signal quality. This work shows how the degree of fiber dispersion affects the signal analytically which is validated by the MATLAB simulink tool. It is also clear that such affection of pulses will result signal to lose the information it contains and thus enhance the error rate. The result of such phenomenon will degrade the SNR performance and will increase the corresponding BER with the increment of fiber dispersion. The resulted signal performance in terms of SNR and BER is shown in this work as well. The result of this work concludes the more the dispersion will increase the more the pulse and as a whole the signal gets suffered.