Timing jitter in adiabatic soliton transmission spans

Summary form only given. Error-free data transmission on fiber spans several hundred kilometers in length can be achieved without in-line amplification by launching solitons with high initial pulse energy. Initially, the pulses propagate adiabatically as fundamental solitons: The pulsewidth broadens and the spectrum narrows to maintain a fundamental soliton as the pulse attenuates. The pulses propagate linearly once the nonlinear length equals the attenuation length of the fiber, so the link performance is limited by dispersion after adiabatic propagation. The soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) imposes a second limitation: Amplitude noise at the transmitter is converted by the dispersive transmission span to timing jitter at the receiver.