Enhancement of amplifier spacing in long-haul optical links through the use of large-effective-area transmission fiber

The use of large effective area (LEA) dispersion-shifted fibers is investigated for enhancing the amplifier spacing in long-haul optical links. Our analysis leads to the definition of a novel figure of merit for amplified links, which is valid for both soliton and NRZ systems. It is shown that exploiting fibers with effective areas between 70 and 90 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ enables a dramatic increase of the amplifier spacing (i.e., in excess of 100%) by comparison to systems using classical 50-/spl mu/m/sup 2/ fibers, The maximum attenuation that can be tolerated for LEA fibers is also determined as a function of the effective area. >