Ultrahigh-speed long-distance TDM and WDM soliton transmission technologies

Recent progress on time-division multiplexed (TDM) and wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) soliton transmission is described, in which dispersion management (DM) plays an important role in increasing the power margin and the dispersion tolerance. The characteristics of the DM soliton are compared with those of return-to-zero (RZ) and nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) pulses. With a small dispersion swing, the system can still be described as an average soliton with a nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE), whereas with a large dispersion swing, the soliton-like steady-state pulse becomes a chirped Gaussian pulse, in which the master equation is closer to a linear Schrodinger equation (LSE) with a parabolic potential well. An in-line modulation scheme up to 80 Gb/s per channel and its two-channel WDM transmission over 10000 km are described. A 640-Gb/s (40 Gb/s/spl times/16 channels) WDM soliton transmission over 1000 km is also reported with a DM single-mode fiber, without the use of in-line modulation. Finally, dark soliton transmission at 10 Gb/s over 1000 km is described as a different nonlinear pulse application.