Performance comparison of 4N×40 Gb/s and N×160 Gb/s transmission systems

In this paper we investigate the transmission performance of 4N×40 Gb/s and N×160 Gb/s WDM systems with equal spectral efficiency (0.4 bit/s/Hz) over SSMF fibers. It has been shown that 4N×40 Gb/s systems possess better linear characteristics enabling better utilization of the system bandwidth and significant enhancement of the maximum transmission distance.