Parallelizable, Bidirectional Method for Simulating Optical-Signal Propagation

We have developed and tested a parallelizable, bidirectional (PB) numerical algorithm for the simulation of propagating laser pulse trains and oppositely propagating laser beams or pulse trains. The PB approach replaces iterative simulation of counterpropagating Raman amplification, stimulated Brillouin scattering, reflections and Rayleigh scattering. Initial tests have shown that at least 98% of the computational core of a finite-difference time-domain test program that uses the new PB algorithm is parallelizable, implying a factor of 7 speed-up with eight processors (for example). This result is important for the design of optical transmission systems because the PB approach increases size of a system that can be designed and simulated in a given time.