Nonlinear phase and polarization rotation noise in fully loaded WDM systems

We examine the character of inter-channel nonlinear interference noise (NLIN) as a function of the number of channels and the overall system length. We show that for a fixed system length, the nonlinear phase and polarization-rotation noise component of the NLIN increases with the number of WDM channels. On the other-hand, for a fixed number of channels the NLIN becomes increasingly circular as the length of the system grows.