Efficient design of a Raman amplified wavelength division multiplexed communication network at 1330 nm

Abstract

From the advent of communication, there has been a constant demand for increasing communication capacity. In optical communications, capacity can be increased by implementing more fibers or can be increased by using the same fiber to transmit more than one signal. The process is known as the wavelength division multiplexing or WDM. Channels placed closer to each other in the wavelength scale leads to the process of DWDM or dense WDM networks. But with so many channels transmitted together over minimum distances of 10 km, the power of each channel decreases significantly within the fiber, hence a Raman amplification system has been incorporated within the network. The whole system is designed at the 1300 nm optical window which has shown the least dispersion among the other optical windows. Results from simulating a 16 channel network with 8 optical pumps, where all are configured in co and counter propagating directions. They have shown good amount of gain, relatively low noise and good SNR over the whole communication band of channels rendering the system to be a faithful communication network.