Soliton transmission in telecommunication networks

Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers are a major breakthrough for soliton communication. Most of the difficult problems preventing soliton communication recently were solved using erbium-doped optical fiber amplifiers (EDFAs). Progress in optical soliton communication has been very rapid, since the invention of the 1.48 μm laser diode pumped EDFA, mainly because of its great potential for high-speed communication. This article describes how optical soliton communication has been established, together with the recently developed "soliton control" technique.