Quasi-stable soliton transmission in dispersion managed fiber links with lumped amplifiers

We study quasi-stable solitons in a cascaded fiber line with alternating positive and negative dispersions, with and without fiber loss. Although more energy is required for forming the quasi-stable solitons than the regular solitons in a uniform fiber system with the same average dispersion, the required soliton energy decreases as the energy loss in one amplification period increases, eventually approaching the same value as in a uniform fiber system. Thus, the predicted advantage of higher soliton energy in dispersion-managed system is diminished in the presence of loss.