Soliton interaction in optical communication systems with short-scale dispersion management

Summary form only given. High-capacity wave-division-multiplexing (WDM) data transmission requires dense packing of the carrier signal both in time and in frequency domains. Then intersymbol and interchannel interactions become the main detrimental factors limiting data transmission. The dispersion-management (DM) technique allows the increase of bit-rate per channel and the suppression of interchannel interaction in WDM systems in comparison with the conventional soliton transmission. Traditional dispersion management for long-haul transmission assumes amplification distance to be much shorter than the dispersion compensation period. Existing technologies make it possible to manufacture fiber with the continuous alternation of positive and negative dispersion sections of few a kilometers long without any splicing. Short-scale dispersion management is a means of controlling the DM soliton energy whilst keeping the average dispersion not too small and taking advantage of four-wave-mixing (FWM) suppression in WDM transmission by high local dispersion. The fundamental properties of optical signal transmission in this regime are not yet well studied. We present path-average theory and examine DM soliton interaction in fiber systems with short-scale dispersion management.