Network performance of optical parametric amplifiers based on tellurite waveguides

Optical parametric amplifiers (OPA) built on glass waveguides are tuneable devices that may be implemented as part of photonic integrated circuits. In this paper, we investigate the performance of recently proposed tellurite OPAs in transparent optical networks (TONs). The dispersion of these OPAs was engineered to provide high gain (∼18 dB) and low ripple (∼4.5 dB) over a bandwidth that is around three times wider than that offered by commercially available Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers. In particular, we analyse a scenario where wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) signals are transmitted through a TON equipped with tellurite two-pump OPAs (2P-OPA) to compensate the link transmission loss. Computer simulations are used to evaluate the influence of 2P-OPA crosstalk on the bit error rate (BER), as well as on the reach, of 243 quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) 56 Gbps signals that span over ∼100 nm. Results indicate that by setting the launched optical power to -29 dBm per channel successful transmission in TONs with diameters as large as 1000 km can be achieved.