Forward error correction (FEC) is one of the newest technologies improving the performance of optical transmission systems. Out-of-band FEC providing high coding gain is the FEC type in common use, and RS (Reed-Solomon) coding capable of correcting both bursty errors and random errors is the most efficient coding used in the systems. In this paper, the error-correcting capability of RS codes with various levels of overhead is compared theoretically; the performance of optically amplified systems is analyzed by means of non-Gaussian approximation instead of traditional Gaussion approximation; based on the theory above, the system performance improved by FEC or Enhanced FEC (EFEC) is numerically simulated and discussed respectively with a view to the side-effects of out-of-band FEC due to increased channel bandwidth. Analyzing the performance of optical transmission system with FEC is not new, the contribution of the paper lies in its more precise approach*non-Gaussion approximation, furthermore the side-effects caused by out-of-band FEC are taken into account, by which the potential of FEC in increasing the capacity and improving the performance of optically amplified systems is illuminated more accurately.

Date Published: 16 October 2001
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 4603, Fiber Optics and Optoelectronics for Network Applications, (16 October 2001); doi: 10.1117/12.444556

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4603:
Fiber Optics and Optoelectronics for Network Applications
Jian Liu; Zhigong Wang, Editor(s)