Recent progress in soliton transmission technology

Abstract

Recent progress on time-division multiplexed (TDM) and wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) soliton transmission is described, in which dispersion management plays an important role in increasing the power margin and the dispersion tolerance. The characteristics of the dispersion-managed soliton are compared with those of return to zero and nonreturn to zero pulses. With a small dispersion swing, the system can still be described as an average soliton using the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, while with a large dispersion swing, the solitonlike steady-state pulse becomes a chirped Gaussian pulse, in which the governing equation is closer to a linear Schrödinger equation with a parabolic potential well. We describe an in-line modulation scheme for up to 80 Gbit/s per channel and its two channel WDM transmission over 10 000 km. Finally, we describe 640 Gbit/s (40 Gbit/s ×16 channels) WDM soliton transmission over 1000 km with a dispersion-managed single-mode fiber.