Abstract
Externally modulated AM-SCM lightwave systems employing optical power amplifiers, small linewidth DFB lasers and long optical feeder lines, face low stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold powers and phase-to-intensity noise conversion by multipath interference through Rayleigh scattering. We show that these problems can be effectively counteracted simultaneously without introducing additional intermodulation distortion, both by single tone phase modulation and by dithering of the laser's optical frequency.