Soliton propagation in long fibers with periodically compensated loss

With computer simulation, we study soliton propagation in an all-optical, long-distance communications system where fiber loss is periodically compensated by Raman gain. We find that distortion of the transmitted pulses from true solitons shows a peak near where and z0are the amplification and soliton periods, respectively. We also describe optimal system design based on the exceptional pulse stability and low soliton powers obtained in the region . Typical amplification periods are in the range 30-50 km, pump powers are less than 100 mW, and for bit rates in the 10 GHz range, time average signal powers are at most a few milliwatts. The single-channel rate-length product for error rate less than 10^-9is GHz Km. Finally, we show that in the gain-compensated system with wavelength multiplexing, soliton-soliton collisions produce random modulation of individual pulse velocities. Nevertheless, multiplexing can yield rate-length products greater than 300 000 GHz km.