An inverse-RZ modulation scheme for dense WDM systems is proposed. Inverse-RZ signals have tolerances to chromatic dispersion and optical bandwidth limitation. The strongly pre-filtered inverse-RZ signals can be adapted to ultra-dense WDM systems, in which the spectral efficiencies are over 1.0 b/s/Hz. We have confirmed the error-free transmission of pre-filtered and co-polarized 40-Gb/s inverse-RZ signals where the channel intervals were 37.5 GHz.

An 80 Gbit/s conventional and carrier-suppressed return-to-zero optical time-division multiplexing signal transmission over a 208 km standard single-mode fiber was experimentally demonstrated. This was achieved by using mid-span optical phase conjugation based on four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifiers. In addition, it was confirmed that the transmitted carrier-suppressed return-to-zero optical signal's carrier phase-relation was held.

RZ signal transmission in an anomalous region with periodic dispersion compensation is examined by a straight-line experiment in terms of the compensation ratio, the signal power, and the pulse width. The optimum condition enables single-channel 20-Gbit/s RZ signal and two-WDM-channel 20-Gbit/s signals (40-Gbit/s in total) to be transmitted over 5,520 km and 2,160 km, respectively. Numerical simulations with the assistance of a basic theory enables analysis of the experimental results. It is shown that the balance between the waveform distortion and the remaining Gordon-Haus jitter determines the optimum conditions to achieve the longest transmission distance. Excess dispersion compensation results in waveform distortion, while insufficient compensation causes a greater amount of remaining jitter. Moreover, spectrum deformation during propagation is experimentally and numerically clarified to have a large effect on the transmission performance, especially for WDM transmission.