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Contents
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What is Soliton?

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GVD

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SPM

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NLSE

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Soliton communication system

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WDM soliton systems

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Issues in WDM soliton System
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What is Soliton?

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Solitons are very narrow, high-intensity optical pulses

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A balance between group velocity dispersion(GVD) and self
phase modulation(SPM)
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Group Velocity Dispersion

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The group delay dispersion per unit length.

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Results in pulse broadening

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Normal GVD  Positive frequency chirp
Anomalous GVD  Negative frequency chirp

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Spectrum remains same but different frequency components
undergo different phase change
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Self phase modulation

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The frequency change caused by a phase shift induced by the
pulse itself.

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Refractive index of the fiber has an intensity dependent
component.

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Leads to frequency chirping i.e. frequency variation

Positive chirp

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Broadening of spectrum
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Soliton

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SPM induced chirp balances GVD induced broadening of
pulse.

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As a result optical pulse travels undistorted.

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Anomalous GVD  Bright solitons
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Normal GVD  Dark solitons
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Non-linear Schrodinger Equation

where is envelope of the pulse

is normalized distance ( is dispersion length)

is normalized time ( is pulse width)

is dispersion parameter

is order of soliton
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NLSE solution

Now putting u=NU and =-1 (For anamalous dispersion)

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Solution of this equation is:

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Observations

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NLSE gives solution for a single soliton pulse.

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It does not take into account losses in the fiber.

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It takes into account only second order effects of dispersion.

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Any pulse given to OF will eventually get locked to Nth order
soliton.

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Higher order solitons have more complex shapes.
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WDM Soliton Systems

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Several soliton bit streams are sent over the same fiber using
different carrier frequencies.

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Capacity of lightwave system can be increased.
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Some important aspects
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RZ data is desired. Why?

• If pulses are not properly spaced they will interact with each
other.

• So for non-interaction only RZ data can be used with duty cycle

of about 10%.

• So required bandwidth for this system is very high.

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…

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Amplification is needed. Why?

• Nonlinearity depends on power level of signal.

• Due to attenuation power decreases so does nonlinearity.

• Nonlinearity must never lose to dispersion.

• Lumped amplification

• Distributed amplification
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…

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Lumped amplification versus Distributed amplification.

• Distributed amplification can be done over wide wavelength

region while lumped amplification is done around specific
wavelength (e.g. EDFA around 1550nm)

• Lumped amplification leads to higher order solitons.

• The main drawback was that Raman amplification required

pump lasers emitting more than 500 mW of CW power near
1.46 μm.
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Block diagram of Soliton
communication system
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Factors affecting soliton
communication
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Soliton interaction

• NLS Equation gives solution for only one soliton pulse and it
does not take into account combined effect in case multiple
pulses.

• Neighboring pulses interfere with each other- Soliton interaction

• Large spacing between pulses limits bit rate of system.

• Using unequal amplitudes spacing can be reduced by 2.

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…

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Initial Frequency chirp
• Many sources impose frequency chirp on data.
• This initial chirp disturbs balance between GVD and SPM.

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Fiber loss management
• SPM is proportional to power intensity
• Amplification to balance decreasing SPM
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…
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Dispersion management

• Employed commonly for WDM soliton systems.

• DDF’s (Dispersion Decreasing Fibers) are used.

• Decreasing GVD counteracts the reduced SPM experienced

by solitons weakened from fiber losses.

• FWM is most limiting factor for WDM system and

dispersion management limits effect of FWM.

Practically dispersion management is used in combination with

loss management.
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Issues related to WDM soliton
systems
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Amplification effects

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Inter-channel collisions

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Timing jitter

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FWM effect
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Amplification effects

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Distributed  Raman amplification

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For single channel system, pump signal needs to be sent along
with signal so power will go on increasing along fiber.

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But in WDM systems,
Higher frequency signals will act as pump signals.
So power will be distributed from higher frequency channels
to lower frequency channels  Crosstalk
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Interchannel Collisions

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Collisions changes the velocity and frequency of solitons.

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At the end of collision soliton recovers its velocity and
frequency but undergo temporal shift.

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Position of soliton within bit slot changes
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Timing Jitter

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Each interchannel collision generates a temporal shift of the
same magnitude for both solitons but in opposite directions.

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Neighbouring solitons undergo different number of collisions

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Different solitons of the same channel are shifted by different
amounts.

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Also optical amplifiers introduce noise which leads to timing
jitter  Gordon-Haus timing jitter.
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Experimental Progress

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In 1991 experiment, 2.5Gb/s solitons were transmitted over
12,000km containing three EDFAs.

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Moria et al (In 1998) succeeded in achieving a record
transmission of 40Gbit/s single-channel DMS transmission
over 10000km.

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Fukuchi et al (2001) succeeded in the transmission of
1.1Tbit/s (20 Gbit/s times 55 channels) WDM DMSs over
3000km.
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References:
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'Raman effects and Four-Wave Mixing in WDM soliton communication system with
Lumped amplifiers' By Hong Wang Yo, IEEE fellow Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications

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Fiber-Optic Communications Systems, Third Edition. Govind P. Agrawal

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'Soliton Collisions in Dispersion-Managed WDM Systems' J I L . Devaney, W.
Forysiak, and N.J. Doran Photonics Research Group, Dept. of EZectronic Engineering
and Applied Physics, Aston University, Birmingham

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'High Performance Soliton WDM Optical Communication System' by Maninder
Singh Electronics and Communication Engineering, Indo Global College of
Engineering, Mohali 140109.
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