Photon Netw Commun (2007) 14:97–102
DOI 10.1007/s11107-006-0051-0
On the impact of filter dispersion slope on the performance
of 40 Gbps DWDM systems and networks
M. Lee · Neo Antoniades
Received: 8 May 2006 / Revised: 8 August 2006 / Accepted: 20 September 2006 / Published online: 7 February 2007
© Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2007
Abstract A technique to separate the phase-induced
penalty of a cascade of optical filters into dispersion,
dispersion slope, and higher-order terms is introduced
and its impact on the proper design and engineering
of high-speed Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed
(WDM) optical systems and networks is demonstrated.
As the currently deployed fiber optic systems and net-
works strive for higher speeds to respond to the growing
global needs for more bandwidth, the impact of phys-
ical layer impairments (such as optical filter dispersion
slope) which were not significant at lower speeds are
now becoming increasingly important and worth look-
ing at. In this article we demonstrate that at speeds of
40 Gbps and beyond, where the next generation systems
will be operating, optical filter dispersion slope is at least
as important as filter dispersion. As a result, separating
the above contributions and accounting for each using
the described modeling technique proves to be an effec-
tive way for designing and engineering such systems.
Keywords Filter concatenation · Dispersion ·
Dispersion slope · Fiber optic systems · Optical
networks
M. Lee
Telecommunications consultant,
Yardley, PA 19067,
USA
N. Antoniades (B)
City University of New York/The College of Staten Island,
Staten Island, NY 10314, USA
e-mail: antoniades@mail.csi.cuny.edu
Introduction—background
The expansion of the Internet, in the past few years, has
brought tremendous growth in high-bandwidth
communication services. Even with the current global
high-technology market downturn, it is recognized that
the need for more bandwidth exists and it is expected
to grow in the years ahead. This will inevitably drive
the accelerated development and deployment of Dense
Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) systems and
networks at speeds of 40 Gbps and beyond. Through this
optical system/network1 expansion and introduction of
new technologies as described in Ref. [5], computer
modeling and simulation is playing an increasingly
important role in providing the ability to perform
“virtual prototyping,” meaning system engineering and
testing before the actual network build-up and deploy-
ment. This is becoming extremely efficient and popular
in today’s cost-conscious corporate and research world
as designers are able to study effects, derive component
specifications and model entire complex systems before
they actually build them.
The ever-increasing growth in data transmission espe-
cially in regions of the world with high business impact
and large metropolitan populations (for example the
Northeast United States) is putting pressure on carri-
ers and service providers to deploy the next genera-
tion of systems and networks as soon as possible. These
will carry increased transmission capacities and will be
upgrades of the existing WDM optical systems but
1 An optical system is a point-to-point connection involving a
number of high-speed channels (DWDM) propagating over fiber,
whereas a network involves signal add/drops in addition to pass-
through. The two are used interchangeably in this article.
98
running at speeds of 40 Gbps per channel and beyond.
Currently 2.5 Gbps (OC-48) and 10 Gbps (OC-192) opti-
cal systems/networks are being deployed. Before
40 Gbps solutions become commodity, cost and trans-
mission performance limitations need to be resolved.
Our work focusses on the performance limitations and
specifically on the impact of optical filter concatenation
effects on system performance.
In transparent DWDM optical networks, each optical
signal may be optically multiplexed/demultiplexed sev-
eral times during propagation from its source to its desti-
nation. Optical multiplexers/demultiplexers
(MUXs/DMUXs) exhibit non-ideal amplitude and
phase transfer functions within the optical signal band.
That is, their amplitude transfer functions might present
passband curvature, tilt, and ripple. In addition, their
phase transfer functions might not vary linearly with
frequency. Each optical filter can be assumed to exhibit
a frequency response described by:
H(f ) = |H(f )|ejφ(f ) (1)
where |H(f )| is the amplitude response characteristic
and φ(f ) is the phase response characteristic.
The above-described impairments are enhanced
when a large number of these devices are cascaded
together. Consequently, optical MUX/DMUX concat-
enation causes signal attenuation and distortion, i.e.,
inter-symbol interference (ISI) and eventually limits the
maximum number of optical network elements that can
be cascaded.
Signal spectral clipping due to the concatenation of
optical MUX/DMUXs also introduces an excess loss,
which changes the operating point of several of the
optical components in a fiber optic system or network.
A comprehensive study of the aforementioned effects
are included in the model presented in Ref. [10]. Other
extensive studies have been performed for sample WDM
optical systems or networks operating at 2.5 Gbps and
10 Gbps that provided a better understanding of the im-
pact of optical filter cascades (amplitude and phase) on
the performance and are presented in Refs. [6, 7, 9] and
references therein. A number of studies at 40 Gbps have
been performed focussing primarily on the effect of fil-
ter bandwidth narrowing and to a lesser extent on the
effects of filter phase [3].
In this paper a simple technique to separate the ampli-
tude, dispersion and higher-order dispersion penalties
from the overall filter effect in optical filter cascades is
introduced. Based on this we were able to show that
as bit rates increase (40 Gbps and beyond) filter dis-
persion slope in addition to plain filter dispersion adds
considerable amount of penalties to the system depend-
ing on the filter bandwidth and shape. In a network case
Photon Netw Commun (2007) 14:97–102
study presented in this article it is shown that dispersion
slope-induced penalty can be as high as close to 1 dBQ
(a performance measure to be explained below). In to-
day’s systems, dispersion compensating devices (such
as dispersion compensating fiber) are usually used to
minimize the penalty induced only from filter and fiber
dispersion, since they do not employ any dispersion
slope in their profiles and thus cannot account for higher-
order dispersion effects. Our simulation methodology
allows for the accurate calculation of these higher-order
dispersion contributions so that they can be properly ac-
counted for before such a system or network is deployed
in the field. There are two options that a systems designer
is faced with after the simulation is completed in order
to deal with the above issues and correct them, namely:
(1) utilize optical components (in this case optical filters)
with tighter dispersion slope specifications and/or (2) al-
low an appropriate performance margin in the system
budget calculation (typically a few dBQs) to account
for the dispersion slope and higher-order dispersion
effect penalties. However, as bit rates increase (espe-
cially for 40 Gbps and beyond) system performance mar-
gins get reduced since system performance deteriorates
and device specifications are tougher to meet, so the
importance of being able to separate the above
contributions and quantify their performance effects
becomes more pronounced especially for deriving the
correct component specifications in the system.
The above technique is demonstrated in a system
example using cascades of a typical optical filter technol-
ogy, i.e., thin film filters (TFFs). These filter concatena-
tion examples should not be considered to represent the
main contribution of the article in terms of results since
these have been studied before in the literature. They
are rather demonstrations of the importance of the tech-
nique we are presenting in providing useful information
for the design of a typical next generation optical sys-
tem. Typical thin-film technology optical filters have no
more than four cavities resulting in narrow passbands2
and high dispersion [8]. For 40 Gbps optical systems con-
taining these filters the problem centers around the fact
that the broader optical signal spectrum needs to pass
through a narrow filter passband (than say its 10 Gbps
counterpart). Recently, TFFs with a large number of
cavities (more than five cavities) have been demon-
strated that exhibit wider passband but maintain fixed
adjacent channel isolation [4]. We will refer to these as
improved TFFs in the rest of the article. We have calcu-
lated the phase-induced penalties resulting from optical
filter cascades with typical and improved TFFs using our
2Filter passband (3-dB or 0.5-dB) is the width of the filter at
−3 dB or −0.5 dB magnitude, respectively.
Photon Netw Commun (2007) 14:97–102
technique and showed the importance of the dispersion
slope effect in a typical next-generation 40 Gbps system.
Simulation model—main principles
In modeling optical systems and networks, performance
criteria might vary depending on the modulation for-
mats, so for the purposes of this study we consider the
case of digital optical signals with intensity modulation
exclusively. In this case, the appropriate performance
criterion is the error probability at the output of the
direct-detection receiver, even though in practice the
Q-factor is commonly used as an alternative for speed
and ease of measurement. The Q-factor is defined in
Ref. [1] and is related to the Bit Error Rate (BER) by
the expression:

 −Q2
1 Q e 2
BER = erfc √ ≈ √ (2)
2 2 Q 2π
The Q penalty of the system is often expressed in dBQs
and since we are mostly concerned with the optical pen-
alties introduced by impairments and in particular filter
concatenation, we will use the following definition for
dBQs throughout the article:
dBQ = 10 log(Qlinear ) (3)
A number of simulation methodologies have been devel-
oped lately such as the one presented in Ref. [11] and
references therein but for efficiency, it is desirable to
semi-analytically evaluate the impact of transmission
effects on the error probability. A typical time-domain
simulation [2] is used for the simulation application be-
low where a 40 Gbps, chirp-free, Return-to-Zero (RZ)
modulated signal was transmitted through a number of
optical filters with varying filter bandwidths. The RZ
pulses were of Gaussian shape with 33% duty cycle [2].
Multi-layer thin-film technology is assumed for the
optical filters since this technology can achieve flat-top
passband characteristics at relatively low cost making
it quite attractive. Our study, however, is more general
and can be applied for any filter technology. The typi-
cal thin-film filter characteristics were modeled using a
third-order Butterworth function, which proved to be
a good fit to the measured data (i.e., power transmit-
tance and dispersion profiles) as shown in Fig. 1. It must
be noted here that detail simulation model verification
using experimental data as presented here is a crucial
step in trying to accurately predict the performance of
such systems.
The effects of filter concatenation were first quanti-
fied by using the Distortion-Induced (DI) eye-closure
99
-60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60
80
60
0
-2
40
Dispersion (ps/nm)
Transmission (dB)
-4
20
-6
0
-20 -8
measurement
-10
-40 model
-60 -12
-60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60
frequency (GHz)
Fig. 1 Measurements (dots) versus model (solid line) verification
of power transmittance and dispersion profile of typical thin-film
filters used in our case study. A third-order Butterworth function
is used for the filter model
penalty criterion [6] and by comparing signal perfor-
mance in the presence of filters versus that without the
filters. Filter concatenation results in two performance
deterioration effects: excess power loss due to filter inser-
tion loss, and signal distortion due to spectral clipping
and filter-induced dispersion. In this paper, we concen-
trate on the second effect since excess power loss can be
compensated by proper amplification. To exclude any
excess loss effect on eye-closure penalty, the eye-open-
ings are normalized with the signal average power. For
the purposes of this article, DI eye-closure penalty is
assumed to be equivalent to Q-penalty although this is a
rather best-case scenario and more work on eye-closure
penalty to Q-penalty relation is underway.
Figure 2 presents the eye-closure penalties due to
distortion for cascaded filters with different 0.5-dB filter
passbands for typical TFFs. The penalties include the
effects of both filter amplitude and phase. From Fig. 2
it is obvious that cascades of optical thin-film technol-
ogy filters with 45 GHz or 55 GHz passbands are ruled
out due to high penalties. For example, for a case where
the optical signal propagates through only two optical
filters the penalty is already very high at 2 dB and 1 dB,
respectively. Filter 0.5-dB passbands of 45–55 GHz are
needed in systems where signals are spaced 100 GHz
apart to keep the inter-channel cross-talk levels low.
Such systems then have a 0.4 spectral efficiency,3 which
is relatively good. The results of Fig. 2 clearly show that
current thin film technology is not suitable for systems
with that spectral efficiency. However, the improved
thin-film technology as described before might be the
right choice for 100 GHz channel spacing systems at
3 System spectral efficiency is calculated as the system channel
spacing divided by the channel bit rate. As high spectral efficiency
as possible is desired for all systems.
100
3.5
3 the Fig. 3 dispersion profile.
55ghz
DI penalty (dB)
2.5
45 ghz
2
1.5
1
0.5
0 persion was developed. This technique is based on the
0 2 4 6
number of filters
Fig. 2 Distortion-induced eye-closure penalty versus number of
filters for different 0.5-dB transmission filter passbands
-100 -50
0 60
-5
Transmission (dB)
-10
-15
-20
-25
-30
-100 -50
Frequncy (GHz)
Fig. 3 Amplitude and dispersion profile of typical TFF (third-
order Butterworth model) and improved TFF (fifth-order Butter-
worth model). A 3-dB passband of 75 GHz is used for the typical
TFFs while a 3-dB passband of 111 GHz is used for the improved
TFFs
40 Gbps due to the increased number of cavities used
in the design that results in more square-like filter char-
acteristics that makes the effective shape of filter cas-
cades less susceptible to narrowing [4]. A larger 0.5-dB
passband can be used while the inter-channel crosstalk
is maintained low. We simulated improved technology
TFFs using the fifth-order Butterworth model (consis-
tent with filter shapes presented in Ref. [4]) while main-
taining the same adjacent channel crosstalk value as the
one for the typical TFF in order to avoid the risk of
increasing the crosstalk penalty from any adjacent chan-
nel. Figure 3 shows the amplitude and dispersion profile
of the improved TFF compared to that of the typical
TFF. The 0.5-dB transmission passband has been wid-
ened from 54 GHz to 90 GHz, whereas adjacent chan-
nel isolation was fixed at 26 dB. The ratio of the width
at 0.5-dB passband to the width at 25 dB (which is a
typical figure of merit) for each filter is 27% and 46%,
respectively.
However, the dispersion within the 0.5-dB transmis-
sion passband is increased from 23 ps/nm to 33 ps/nm
Photon Netw Commun (2007) 14:97–102
and also the dispersion slope has changed as evident by
65 ghz
75 ghz
New technique for separating orders of dispersion
95 ghz
In trying to understand the specific effects of filter phase
on system performance, a technique that separates the
effects of dispersion from those of higher-order dis-
8 10 12 14 16
observation that the filter phase function can be
expanded around a given reference frequency f0 (i.e.,
transmitter reference frequency) by Taylor series as fol-
lows:
∂φ 1 ∂ 2φ
0 50 100
φ(f ) = φ(f = f0 ) + (f − f0 ) + (f − f0 )2
∂f 2 ∂f 2
1 ∂ 3φ
+ (f − f0 )3 + 0[4]3
40
Dispersion (ps/nm)
(4)
20 6 ∂f 3
0 The first and second terms in the above equation do not
-20 contribute to signal distortion (they simply represent a
-40
pulse delay), whereas the third and fourth terms rep-
typical TFF resent the dispersion and the dispersion slope, respec-
improved TFF -60
tively. To demonstrate this technique, these different
0 50 100
orders of dispersion are factored into the time-domain
simulation of filter cascades for both cases of filter tech-
nology, i.e., typical as well as improved TFFs as described
before. In addition, transmitter (i.e., laser) typical mis-
alignments are introduced (±10 GHz) to simulate real
life cases. Client transmitters in a deployed system are
usually never transmitting at the exact specified fre-
quency but have some small deviation due to temper-
ature variations, component imperfections, etc. These
deviations can also contribute to the narrowing of the
effective passband that an optical signal experiences as it
traverses cascades of optical filters. Typical market sur-
veys have indicated the ±10 GHz misalignment range to
be realistic in deployed DWDM systems.
Figure 4a and b present the results of applying the
above separation technique to determine the individual
penalties as a function of laser detunings for:(a) a cas-
cade of four 54 GHz (0.5-dB passband) typical TFFs;
(b) a cascade of four 90 GHz (0.5-dB passband) im-
proved TFFs. This scenario (i.e., four cascaded filters)
can represent a typical optical system with one or two
add/drop nodes4 at major locations. From the figures
we observe that the amplitude penalty (lower curve
with round points) for typical TFFs is already more
4 Add/drops here refer to locations where DWDM signals are
de-multiplexed, a selected number of them dropped to client inter-
faces and then re-multiplexed for transmission in an all-optical
fashion.
Photon Netw Commun (2007) 14:97–102 101

Fig. 4 Eye-closure penalty (a) 2.5 (b) 2.5

induced by amplitude, total
2 2 amp+dis+slope
dispersion, dispersion slope

Penalty (dB)

Penalty (dB)
amp+dis
and higher-order dispersion 1.5 1.5 amp
for four cascaded filters with:
1 1
(a) typical thin-film total
amp+dis+slope
technology; (b) improved 0.5 amp+dis 0.5
amp
thin-film technology using the
proposed term separation 0 0
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15
technique Laser detuning (GHz)
Laser detuning (GHz)

OADM OADM OADM OADM OADM total

2.5
…. … amp+dis+slope
2
amp+dis
amp

penalty (dB)
1.5
Fig. 5 Typical DWDM network with five add/drop nodes. Signal
goes though one MUX (add) and one DMUX (drop) filter as well 1
as three add/drops (each having two optical filters), for a total of
eight optical filters 0.5

than 1 dB, while the improved TFFs case only shows
less than 0.4 dB penalty including laser offsets. Clearly
Fig. 4b shows that improved TFFs are good candidates
for 100 GHz spacing 40 Gbps systems since the overall
penalty is under 1 dBQ, which is within the acceptable
limits for system design. The dispersion penalties for
both filter types are very close (∼0.2 dB), indicating that
the slightly increased dispersion value within the 0.5-dB
passband for the typical TFF (Fig. 3) is not significant in
terms of penalty. However, the dispersion slope penalty
is more pronounced than the dispersion penalty for both
cases (∼0.5 dB). Also note that the laser center wave-
length misalignment affects the amount of penalties. We
then increase the number of filters to eight to simulate
a typical DWDM network with an increased number
of add/drops and focus on the improved performance
TFFs. Such a typical optical DWDM network is shown
in Fig. 5, where five optical nodes are used and the stud-
ied signal is added at node A and dropped at node B.
Each node consists (among other components) of two
improved thin-film technology filters. Figure 6 shows
the individual penalties (amplitude, phase) of eight cas-
caded improved TFFs. It shows an increased dispersion
slope penalty, ∼1 dB (at ±10 GHz offset), while the dis-
persion penalty is still around 0.3 dB. It also shows in-
creased amplitude penalty compared to the case of four
concatenated filters, a fact that is clearly attributed to
the filter passband narrowing effect. Clearly in this case,
the dispersion slope of the optical filters is the limiting
factor in terms of performance.
It is clear from the above examples that our new meth-
odology provides the ability to determine the impact of
each dispersion order in an optical filter cascade sep-
arately. As bit rates increase and/or channel spacings
0
0 5 10 15
Laser detuning (GHz)
Fig. 6 Eye-closure penalty induced by amplitude, dispersion, dis-
persion slope, and higher-order dispersion for the eight cascaded
advanced thin-film filters. Contribution of each phase effect is cal-
culated by obtaining the difference in penalty with and without
that effect
decrease, higher-order dispersion contributions will af-
fect system performance more so being able to know
their individual values is important. In today’s systems,
deployed dispersion compensating devices can only cor-
rect for dispersion and not for higher-order contribu-
tions. These need to be either budgeted into the system
performance (1 dBQ for dispersion slope in this network
example) or their effect should be reduced by means
of designing components with improved specifications
(i.e., better dispersion slope specifications, etc.). Both
approaches require information that can be provided
by the above presented novel technique using computer
simulation.
Conclusion
In this work a novel technique is developed, and that
enables the separation of the performance impacts of
different orders of filter dispersion in optical filter cas-
cades. The technique is applied to real optical systems
and networks through the use of computer simulation.
A sample case study using thin-film filter technology and
a 40 Gbps optical system is presented. It is shown that
filter dispersion slope and its impact on system perfor-
mance can be an even bigger concern than plain filter
102 Photon Netw Commun (2007) 14:97–102

dispersion at 40 Gbps and beyond. The main contribu- Mirim Lee received the B.S.
tion of this article concentrates in the derivation of the and M.S. degree in physics
from Seoul National Univer-
above technique that provides a way for more accu-
sity, Seoul, Korea in 1988 and
rate budgeting for all dispersion-related effects and not 1990, respectively, and the
just dispersion and for setting appropriate target per- Ph.D. degree in physics from
formance specifications for filter components in typical the University of Florida,
Gainesville, in 1996. She was
optical systems and networks.
a postdoctoral fellow at the
University of Houston, Hous-
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ics in Quantum Electronics – Special Issue on Modeling of in leading peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
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348–362.