Since the advent of optical communications, a great technological effort has
been devoted to the exploitation of the huge bandwidth of optical fibers. Start-
ing from a few Mb/s single channel systems, a fast and constant technological
development has led to the actual 10 Gb/s per channel dense wavelength di-
vision multiplexing (DWDM) systems, with dozens of channels on a single
fiber. Transmitters and receivers are now ready for 40 Gb/s, whereas hundreds
of channels can be simultaneously amplified by optical amplifiers.
