Procedure to optimize the intercarrier spacing in superchannels impaired by the cascading of WSS-based ROADMs

Abstract

A new procedure is proposed to optimize the intercarrier spacing and wavelength selective switch (WSS) bandwidth for superchannels, using a Monte Carlo simulation. We perform an exhaustive assessment of the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) penalties due to the optical filtering and intercarrier crosstalk, and concluded that the optimum intercarrier spacing is at most 1.1 GHz larger than the Nyquist bandwidth and the results show how the number of cascaded WSSs influences the intercarrier spacing.