Fiber soliton optical telecommunication system

摘要

This invention concerns with optical fiber soliton telecommunication systems. The propagation speed of optical solitons in single mode optical fiber depends on the wavelength of the solitons. Thus, if solitons of different wavelengths are co-propagating, "collisions" between pulses can be expected to result. Collisions between solitons do preserve the soliton character of the colliding pulses, even in the presence of perturbations of the type present in fiber communications systems, e.g., core size variations, distributed or lumped loss, and distributed gain; thus, a wavelength division multiplexed soliton system is possible, and techniques and formulae for the design of such systems are disclosed, In preferred embodiments, fiber loss is periodically compensated by Raman gain. Typical amplification periods (using currently available silica-based fiber) are 30-50 km, typical pump powers are less than 100 mW, and rate-length products of the order of 3 105 GHz km are possible. Multiplexed soliton systems have several advantages over prior art soliton systems. For instance, they permit attainment of very high transmission rates without the use of very high speed electronics. For instance, an examplary 3000 km, 24 channel multiplexed soliton system has a total transmission rate of 106 GHz, i.e., 4.6 GHzlchannel.