All-Optical Soliton Transmission Systems

Abstract

In this chapter, we introduce the concept of all-optical soliton transmission systems and problems that appear therein. By taking advantage of the robust nature of solitons, construction of ultra-high-speed transmission systems that do not require electronic repeaters for regeneration of the pulse shape is possible. Such a system is generally called an all-optical transmission system. The all-optical transmission system has a tremendous advantage over repeater-based systems not only in the significant reduction of the construction cost but also in the scalability. The all-optical transmission system, first introduced by Hasegawa for a soliton system, is now commonly employed in present day optical transmission systems. The first system proposed by Hasegawa [4] and experimentally demonstrated by Mollenauer and Smith [24] uses Raman amplification in transmission fiber itself. Although most of the current all-optical transmission systems utilize erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), Raman amplifiers are reviving now due to their low noise and wide band characteristics.