Effect of fiber loss on optimum signal design for dispersive nonlinear fibers

Summary form only given. The emerging prominence of the chirped return to zero transmission format places a new emphasis on optimally prechirping pulses for long haul fiber systems. However, predicting the exact amount of initial chirp necessary for a given output pulse width is difficult; moreover, analytical methods for predicting optimal prechirp have treated only the lossless case. The paper introduces a new way to calculate prechirp which accounts for attenuation, dispersion and nonlinearity. We focus on designing for equal input and output pulse widths and consider both the normal and anomalous dispersion cases. Optimum prechirp and maximum link distances are determined from simple analytic expressions, and the results are shown to be in good agreement with split-step Fourier simulation.