What is impact of linear and nonlinear effects in DWDM network?

Work of transmission systems is to transmit signal from one location to another location over media and receive signal error free. Lot of impairments caused by Transmission media, system components and by signal itself. As in DWDM network each channel which carries signals like SDH, SONET, and Ethernet propagates in optical domain it encounters with linear and nonlinear effects, which distort signal pulse shape and amplitude. As each signal generated and received by Transceivers or Transponders. When this distorted optical signal received by Transceiver, it converts the optical signal in electrical signal, which decodes the actual information like SDH, SONET or Ethernet carry over individual channel. In digital format the impact of optical Linear and nonlinear impairments are detected as BER. Because these impairments, changed the original patterns of pulse shape and amplitude of signal, pulse width expansion leads to inter symbol interference, and at receiver end this is decoded 1 as 0 or 0 as 1, which cause BER.