The physical size of transparent optical networks depends on several performance-degrading transport effects. The majority of the effects are "static" impairments (e.g., dispersion), since they limit the performance of both static and reconfigurable optical networks. In this contribution we are focused on the major "dynamic" impairment that put limits to the performance of reconfigurable optical networks. We study the impact of signal transients on the performance of optical networks and we demonstrate how the use of transient gain controlled erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) enables optimum network design. Emphasis is given on metropolitan area optical networks.
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