Multichannel optical fiber communications
AssigneeLucent Technologies Inc.
InventorClinton R. Giles
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
WDM optical fiber communications entails bidirectional transmission with at least two WDM channels in opposite transmission directions in a single fiber. As compared with unidirectional transmission, a number of capacity-limiting considerations are relaxed. Operation using in-ground dispersion-shifted fiber permits system capacities of conventional unidirectional WDM.
Claims19
Optical fiber communications system for operation at a system wavelength, the system including at least two transmission lines, each line including a transmitter, a receiver and a span of fiber, in which the span includes at least one optical amplifier which compensates for a substantial part of fiber loss in the span, the system providing for simultaneous operation of a set of at least four channels of channel wavelength values which together encompass the system wavelength, in which channel-to-channel wavelength spacing is .ltoreq.5 nm,
- CHARACTERIZED IN THAT
- each of the two lines transmits a set of channels bidirectionally, the set including two channels in a first transmission direction and two channels in the second transmission direction, and in which an optical amplifier simultaneously amplifies the entire set of channels.
Communication method using an optically amplified communication system, the system including at least two transmission lines, each line including a span of optical fiber having a chromatic dispersion less than 1.5 ps/nm-km at the system wavelength, the method including simultaneously transmitting at least four WDM channels in each line, the channels having channel-to-channel wavelengths together encompassed within the spectral range of an optical amplifier in the span,
- CHARACTERIZED IN THAT
- the method comprises transmitting bidirectionally in each of the two lines with a pair of channels in a first transmission direction and a pair of channels in the second transmission direction.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.