ABSTRACT
This paper experimentally investigates the effectiveness of electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) for signals limited by self phase modulation (SPM) and various dispersion levels. The sources considered are low-cost conventional directly modulated lasers (DMLs), fabricated for operation at 2.5 Gb/s but modulated at 10 Gb/s. Performance improvement is achieved by means of electronic feed-forward and decision-feedback equalization (FFE/DFE) at the receiver end. Experimental studies consider both transient and adiabatic chirp dominated DMLs sources. The improvement is evaluated in terms of required optical signal-to-noise ratio (ROSNR) for bit-error-rate (BER) values of 10(-3) versus launch power over uncompensated links of standard single mode fiber (SSMF).
