Performance Impact of Signal Reflections in a Single–Fiber Bidirectional System

Single–fiber bidirectional transmission systems using the same wavelength for both directions suffer from reflection induced interference. Experimental results demonstrate the dependence of system performance and of the threshold of the forward error correction (FEC) on signal waveform variations induced by fiber effects. Larger signal distortions lead to slightly larger impact of the interference, but reduce the shift of the FEC threshold to smaller bit error ratios.