A study on the propagation characteristics of pulses in optical fiber communication systems

The one dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE) have wide range of applications in nonlinear optical and laser physics. The NLSE is pivotal to the description of RZ optical communications link providing description not only of pulse transmission in the presence of dispersion and nonlinearities but also pulse evolution during amplification in a single mode optical amplifier. The design of new optical systems can be carried out by analyzing the propagation characteristics of the pulses in the fiber media. In this paper we believe that for the first time the NLSE equation was solved by both the scalar and vector approach considering with and without the polarization concepts respectively. Various nonlinear effects like self phase modulations, stimulated Raman scattering and self steepening effects are considered while solving the equation. The propagation characteristic of the pulses in the fiber media is analyzed and verified by simulation. The most commonly used algorithm in fiber system simulation is the split step method. It is based on the partitioning of fibers into spans