Early WDM systems transported two or four wavelengths that were widely spaced. WDM and the “follow-on” technologies of CWDM and DWDM have evolved well beyond this early limitation.
WDM
Traditional, passive WDM systems are wide-spread with 2, 4, 8, 12, and 16 channel counts being the normal deployments. This technique usually has a distance limitation of less than 100 km.
CWDM
Today, coarse WDM (CWDM) typically uses 20-nm spacing (3000 GHz) of up to 18 channels. The CWDM Recommendation ITU-T G.694.2 provides a grid of wavelengths for target distances up to about 50 km on single mode fibres as specified in ITU-T Recommendations G.652, G.653 and G.655. The CWDM grid is made up of 18 wavelengths defined within the range 1270 nm to 1610 nm spaced by 20 nm.
DWDM
Dense WDM common spacing may be 200, 100, 50, or 25 GHz with channel count reaching up to 128 or more channels at distances of several thousand kilometers with amplification and regeneration along such a route.
