The work presented here is concerned with an investigation of the impact of source nonlinearity on the performance of multichannel subcarrier multiplexed optical fibre systems. There has been much interest recently in the capabilities of subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) as a means of realising economical multichannel systems which can be deployed in the short to medium term to support a wide range of analogue and digital services. The attractive feature of SCM is that it provides a way of exploiting the multi-gigahertz bandwidth potential of high speed lasers using conventional and established microwave techniques. Also it is very flexible being capable of simultaneously transmitting conventional baseband and microwave signals with the same fibre and detector. Moreover, SCM systems can be combined with coherent techniques and wavelength division multiplexing to utilise fully the tens of terahertz capacity of single-mode fibre.

Inspec keywords: subcarrier multiplexing; optical fibre networks; wavelength division multiplexing

Other keywords: multichannel subcarrier multiplexed optical fibre systems; source nonlinearity; economical multichannel systems; wavelength division multiplexing; subcarrier multiplexed optical systems; performance assessment

Subjects: Multiplexing and switching in optical communication