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Chapter-12

SOLITON BASED SYSTEMS

After reading this chapter you will be able to understand A new category of optical pulses ( Solitons ) and their role to enhance the capacity of communication systems Analysis of soliton pulse evolution through fibers. Design and Characterization of soliton links using lumped EDFA repeaters. Factors which determine the ultimate capacity of soliton based links. Reasons for bit error and Bit Error Rate Analysis. Issues encountered in soliton amplification using EDFAs Limitations and future of soliton based sytems

12.1 What is a soliton?

: A Brief History

Over one hundred and fifty years ago, while conducting experiments to determine the most efficient design for canal boats, a young Scottish engineer named John Scott Russell (1808-1882) made a remarkable scientific discovery. It was nothing but the existence of a solitary wave in a narrow canal of water. It was not until the mid 1960's when applied scientists began to use modern digital computers to study nonlinear wave propagation that the soundness of Russell's early ideas began to be appreciated. He viewed the solitary wave as a self-sufficient dynamic entity, a "thing" displaying many properties of a particle. From the modern perspective it is used as a constructive element to formulate the complex dynamical behavior of wave systems throughout science from hydrodynamics to nonlinear optics, from plasmas to shock waves, from tornados to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, from the elementary particles of matter to the elementary particles of thought. The concept of solitary waves was first introduced in 1834 by Russell [1]. The word soliton as it is was coined in the year 1965 to describe the particle-like properties of pulses propagating in a nonlinear medium. In 1973, Akira Hasegawa of AT&T Bell Labs

was the first to suggest that solitons could exist in optical fibers, due to a balance between self-phase modulation and anomalous dispersion [2]. Mollenauer succeeded the first experiment of soliton propagation in optical fiber in 1980 [3]. Many numerical investigations of soliton propagation in connection with transmission capacity of optical fiber communication system have been carried out. Optical solitons have enormous potential in long haul communication systems as they are stable over a very long propagation distance [4]. Experimental demonstration of soliton propagation in long fibers with the loss being compensated by Raman gain was demonstrated by L. F. Mollenauer and R. H. Stolen [5]. It was proved that with sufficient gain to compensate for net fiber energy loss, a distortion less propagation of 10-ps Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) pulses at a wavelength of 1560nm over a 10-km length of single-mode fiber is possible and the it was experimentally demonstrated. For long distance optical transmission systems, optical amplifiers must be used to compensate for fiber loss. The fiber loss induced pulse broadening in long distance communication systems are counter balanced by amplifying the solitons periodically by using Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFA). This method was demonstrated experimentally by Suzuki et al. in 1990, when error free data transmission at 5 Gb/s over a distance of 250 km using EDFAs as repeaters was reported [6]. In 1991, Nakazawa experimentally proved the remarkable stability of the optical soliton for 1 million km of transmission [7]. During late 1991, Mollenauer showed error-free transmission of solitons at 25 Gb/s for as long as 14 000 km[8]. Nakazawa demonstrated the stable transmission of optical signal at 10 Gb/s over 180 million km, and suggested that error-free transmission over unlimited distance is possible [9].

12.2 Solitons in Optical Communications Optical solitons are optical pulses which can traverse very long distances without getting affected by Group Velocity Dispersion (GVD). The variation of amplitude of such pulses with respect to time is secant hyperbolic as shown in Figure 12.1 and can be represented mathematically as

A(t ) = A0 sec h(t )

(12.1)

Let P0 and T0 represent the peak power and width of the pulse, normalizing equation 12.1 with respect to amplitude and time we get,

u (t ) =

A0

t sec h T P0 0

(12.2) (12.3)

u (t ) = u 0 sec h( )

where u (t ) is the normalized amplitude and is the normalized time. A laser diode when operated in a pulsed mode emits a light pulse which is Gaussian in shape. If a Gaussian light pulse of appropriate amplitude, width and a chosen power is launched to an optical fiber, it can evolve as a soliton. The selection of parameters ensures a counter balancing action between GVD and Self Phase Modulation (SPM). For this we define two parameters, dispersion length

LD and nonlinear length L NL . The parameters are

defined for a given fiber and the source from which the power is launched. LD and L NL are defined by equations (12.4) and (12.5) respectively
LD =
L NL =

T0

2
1 P0

(12.4)

(12.5)

where T0 is the pulse width, 2 is the group-velocity dispersion coefficient and is the nonlinearity coefficient.

u ( ) = u 0 sec h( )

Figure 12.1 A Secant hyperbolic pulse.

Solitons evolve because of the dynamic balance between the GVD and SPM. SPM originates from optical Kerr effect. The intensity dependence of refractive index of the fiber resulting from the higher order nonlinearities are referred to as Kerr nonlinearities. The refractive index of medium results from the applied optical field perturbing the atoms or molecules of the medium to induce an oscillating polarization, which then radiates and produce an overall perturbed field. At low intensities the polarization is a linear function of electric field and hence the perturbation of the field can be realistically described by a constant value. The index of refraction is a function of propagation constant k , frequency and intensity of electric field E . For a plane electro magnetic wave in a Kerr media the index of refraction is given by equation (12.6)
n= ck

= nl ( ) + n nl E

(12.6)

nl and nnl are the linear and nonlinear indices of refraction of the fiber material. The nonlinear equation that governs the propagation of an optical pulse inside an optical fiber is the Nonlinear Schrdinger Equation (NLSE). This equation is obtained from the fundamental Maxwells equations which describes the propagation of optical fields in the fiber. For pulse widths 1 ps one can use the following equation to study the

propagation of a pulse through a fiber where higher order dispersive and nonlinear effects are not considered
E 2 2 E n nl 0 2 E E + i E = 0 (12.7) + 2 z 2 T c 2

where E ( z , t ) is the amplitude envelope of the electric field. The equation (12.7) includes second order dispersion 2 responsible for GVD effects (second term from the left), third term in the left hand side is the fiber nonlinearity term responsible for SPM, and the last term accounts for the fiber loss with a fiber loss parameter .

Normalizing the electric field amplitude E ( z , t ) to yield an amplitude A( z , T ) such that


A represents the optical power in watts, equation (12.7) reduces to
2

2 A A 2 = i 2 + i A A A 2 z 2 T 2
With normalization of time variable as =
A( z , ) = P0 exp( z 2)u ( z , ) and mapping the distance variable equation(12.8) reduces to

(12.8)

T T0

, the normalized amplitude as


(12.9)

z onto a new value such that =

z the LD

u i 2u = + iN 2 2

(12.10)

Fiber dispersion plays a critical role in propagation of short optical pulses since different spectral components associated with the pulse travel at different speeds given by c n( ) ,

where c is the velocity of light in vacuum and n( ) is the frequency dependent refractive index. More specifically, red components travel faster than the blue components in the normal dispersion regime ( 2 >0), while the opposite occurs in the anomalous dispersion regime ( 2 <0). Mathematically, the effects of fiber dispersion are accounted for by expanding the modepropagation constant in a Taylor series about the center frequency 0

( ) = n( )
where

= 0 + 1 ( 0 ) +

1 2 ( 0 )2 + ... 2

(12.11)

m =

d m m d =0

(m = 0, 1, 2, ...)

The pulse envelope moves with a group velocity, v g and the parameter 2 is responsible for pulse broadening. v g and 2 can be written as

vg =

1
D2 d 2n 3 d 2 n = = c d 2 2c 2 d2 2 c

(12.12)

2 =

(12.13)

The nonlinearity coefficient in equation (12.8) is defined by

n nl 0 cAeff

(12.14)

where

nnl is the nonlinear index of refraction, in units of m 2 / W and Aeff is the effective

core area in units of m 2 . Depending on the initial pulse width and the peak power of the incident pulse either the dispersive or the nonlinear effects dominate the pulse evolution along the fiber. Two length scales are introduced based on which we can classify the pulse evolution through a fiber. The dispersion length LD and the nonlinear length LNL (given by equations 12.4 and 12.5 respectively) provide the length scales over which the dispersive and the nonlinear effects become important for pulse evolution along a fiber of length L. Depending on the relative magnitudes of
L , LD and LNL the propagation

behavior of the pulse is found to vary. When the fiber length L is such that L << LNL and
L << LD then neither dispersive nor nonlinear effects play a significant role during pulse

propagation. The first two terms on the right hand side of the equation (12.8) becomes negligible and the shape remains unchanged during propagation. In this regime of pulse propagation there only a mere reduction in the pulse amplitude because of fiber loss and hence the fiber acts as a transporter of optical pulses with its amplitude boosted when required. When the fiber length is such that L << LNL but L LD , the second term on the right hand side of the equation (12.8) becomes negligible compared to the other two. The pulse evolution is then governed by GVD, and the nonlinear effects play a relatively minor role. Thus the dispersion dominant regime is applicable whenever the fiber and the pulse parameters are such that,

LD P0T0 = LNL 2

<<

(12.15)

When the fiber length L is such that L << LD but L LNL , the dispersion term in the equation(12.8) becomes negligible to the nonlinear term. In that case, the pulse evolution through the fiber is governed by SPM leading to the spectral broadening of the pulse. The nonlinearity dominant regime is applicable when

LD P0T0 = LNL 2

>>

(12.16)

When the fiber length L is longer or comparable to both LD and LNL , the dispersion and nonlinearity act together as the pulse propagates along the fiber. The interplay can lead to a qualitatively different behavior compared to that expected with SPM and GVD alone. In the anomalous dispersion regime ( 2 < 0 ) the fiber can support optical solitons. In the dispersion dominant regime if we consider the propagation of a Gaussian pulse along the fiber with no phase modulation (unchirped) after it traverse a distance of few dispersion length it is found to broaden and the pulse becomes chirped. The extent of broadening is governed by the dispersion length LD . For a given fiber length, short pulses broaden more because of shorter dispersion length. The incident field of the pulse after traveling a distance of z along the fiber is assumed to be a Gaussian pulse

U ( z, t ) =

T2 exp 1 2 T i z 2 2 0 (T0 i 2 z ) 2 T0

(12.17)

The time dependence of phase implies that the instantaneous frequency differs across the pulse from the central frequency. In the normal dispersion regime the frequency changes linearly across the pulse. This is referred to as the linear frequency chirp. Thus the chirp depends on the sign of 2 . In the normal dispersion regime ( 2 > 0), the chirp is negative at the leading edge and increases linearly across the pulse and the opposite happens in the anomalous dispersion regime ( 2 < 0). The pulse can maintain its width only if all spectral components arrive together or equivalently 2 = 0. Any time delay in the arrival of different spectral components leads to pulse broadening. The dispersion induced chirp

broadens the pulse since different parts of the pulse develop slightly different frequencies and propagate at different speeds along the fiber. In particular, the index of refraction is found to depend on the square of the amplitude of the applied electric field. If the optical fibers are designed appropriately, the dispersive and nonlinear effects can be balanced, thereby allowing for the possibility of a localized optical soliton pulse to propagate through the fiber without distortion due to either effect. At low intensities and for shorter distances, this nonlinear effect is negligible. Self-phase modulation (SPM) is the frequency change caused by a phase shift induced by the pulse itself. As mentioned earlier SPM arises because the refractive index of the fiber has an intensity dependent component. When an optical pulse travels through the fiber, the higher intensity portions of an optical pulse encounter a higher refractive index of the
fiber compared with the lower intensity portions. The leading edge will experience a

positive refractive index gradient ( dn dt ) and trailing edge a negative refractive index gradient (- dn dt ) as shown in Figure (12.2).

Figure. 12.2 Effect of SPM

This temporally varying index change results in a temporally varying phase change. The optical phase changes with time in exactly the same way as the optical signal. Different parts of the pulse undergo different phase shift because of intensity dependence of phase fluctuations. This results in frequency chirping. The rising edge of the pulse finds frequency shift in upper side whereas the trailing edge experiences shift in lower side. Hence primary effect of SPM is to broaden the spectrum of the pulse, keeping the

temporal shape unaltered. For a fiber containing high-transmitted power, the phase () introduced by a field E = E0 cos(t k ) over a fiber length L is given by

(nl + n nl ) Leff . (1 exp(L))

(12.18) . The first term on right hand side refers to

where effective length Leff =

linear portion of phase constant ( l ) and second term provides nonlinear phase constant ( nl ) . This variation in phase with time is responsible for change in frequency spectrum. For a Gaussian pulse, the optical carrier frequency is modulated and the new instantaneous frequency becomes,

* = 0 +

d dt

(12.19)

The sign of the phase shift due to SPM is negative because of the minus sign in the expression for phase i.e., (t k ) using equations (1) and (2) * can be written as,

* = 0

Leff nnl

dI dt dI >0 dt

(12.20)

At leading edge of the pulse

* = 0 (t )
And at trailing edge

(12.21)

dI <0 dt
(12.22)

* = 0 + (t )
where, 2

(t ) =

Leff nnl

dI dt

(12.23)

Thus chirping phenomenon (frequency variation) is generated due to SPM, which leads to the spectral broadening of the pulse without any change in temporal distribution. The SPM induced chirp can be used to modify the pulse broadening effects of dispersion. SPM phenomenon also can be used in pulse compression. In the wavelength region where chromatic dispersion is positive, the red-shifted leading edge of the pulse travels

slower and moves toward the center of pulse. Similarly, the blue shifted trailing edge travels faster, and also moves towards the center of the pulse. In this situation SPM causes the pulses to narrow. Another simple pulse compression scheme is based on filtering self-phase modulation-broadened spectrum In the case of SPM, the power at the rising edge of an optical pulse changes the refractive index of the fiber seen at the middle of the optical pulse. And, similarly the middle of the optical pulse changes the refractive index seen at the falling edge of the optical pulse. As the refractive index governs the speed at which light travels in the fiber, the front, middle and rear portions of the pulse travel at different velocities. Thus, SPM causes compression in the pulse. When this effect is exactly balanced by the dispersion of the fiber, a soliton pulse that travels without any change in shape or energy is formed. Soliton pulse evolution through a passive fiber can be simulated by numerically solving NLSE. A computationally efficient Neuro-fuzzy method exists to analyze soliton pulse evolution for which the computational time remains independent of propagation distance [10]. The pulse evolution in active mediums like an Erbium Doped Fiber (EDF) or Praseodymium Doped Fiber (PDF) can be analyzed by solving Max-Bloch equations [11].
E 2n ( E E) 2 E 2 E 3 E 2 i 2 2 i 3 3 + i E Aeff E E + i nl Aeff TR E= 0 0 P 6 2 20 z 2 c
2 2

(12.24) (12.25) (12.26)

2 P P = i EW t h T2
W W0 W i = ( EP E P) t 2h T1

Equation (12.24) is the Modified NLSE including the higher order dispersive and nonlinear terms. Here E(z ,t) and P(z ,t) are the complex envelopes of the electric field and polarization respectively, 0 is the carrier frequency, = t 1 z and 1 is the reciprocal group velocity, 2 in units of ps2/km and 3 in unit of ps3/km are the first and second-order group velocity dispersion parameters, respectively and 2 < 0 is considered, is the fiber loss, nnl is the Kerr coefficient in the unit of m2/W, TR is related to the slope of the Raman gain profile near 0 , 0 is the permeability in free space, is

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the nonlinearity coefficient, Aeff is the effective core area of the fiber and

P is the

polarization. For higher values of pulse width and low values of pulse power the effect of the effect of the nonlinear terms (sixth and seventh of equation(12.24)) and the higher order dispersion (third term of equation(12.24)) can be neglected. But when the pulse becomes narrow in the sub-picosecond regime, the effects of these terms also becomes significant because of pronounced higher order dispersion, self steepening and self frequency shift. The polarization P introduces the gain from the pumped two-level atoms, which follows the Bloch equations in the rotating wave approximation are given by equations 12.25 and 12.26. Here,

W = N 0 ( 22 11 ) is the population inversion in

m 3 , where N0 is the doping density of the two level atoms, 11 and 22 are the matrix
elements of the density matrix, W0 is the equilibrium inversion, is the dipole moment of the two level atom in unit of Coulm-m, T1 is the metastable life time ( in the order of

ms) and T 2 is the polarization relaxation time (in the order of ps). For the pumped two
level atoms we take P ( z , t = 0) = 0 and W ( z , t = 0) = N 0 as the initial conditions. Figure12.3 shows the evolution of a 125ps pulse with a peak power of 0.32mW through a lossless passive monomode fiber of dispersion parameter 2 = 20 ps 2 / km . In this case as LD LNL << 1 , the dispersive effects dominates over the nonlinear effects leading to the broadening of the pulse in the time domain.

Figure 12.3: Soliton pulse evolution through a monomode lossless fiber when dispersive effects dominate over nonlinear effects ( P0 = 0.32 mW , = 0 , 2 = 20 ps 2 / km , = 0.003 / W / m )

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Figure 12.4 shows the propagation of 125 ps pulse through same fiber but with peak power of 1W. These values of 2 , pulse width and peak power are such that the ratio L D L NL >> 1 and the nonlinear effects dominates over the dispersive effects leading to the compression of the pulse.

Figure 12.4: Soliton pulse evolution through a monomode lossless fiber when nonlinear effects dominate over dispersive effects ( P0 = 1W , = 0 , 2 = 20 ps 2 / km , = 0.003 / W / m )

In Figure 12.5, the peak power of the pulse is kept at 0.64mW for which LD becomes equal to LNL . The GVD and SPM effects compensate each other leading to soliton pulse evolution. In all the above cases fiber was assumed to be lossless, but optical fibers are inherently lossy.

Figure 12.5 :

Soliton pulse evolution through a monomode lossless fiber when nonlinear effects and

dispersive effects are counter balanced ( P0 = 0.64 mW , = 0 , 2 = 20 ps 2 / km , = 0.003 / W / m )

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The basic attenuation mechanisms in the fiber are absorption, scattering and excessive bending. The attenuation imposes an upper limit on the distance over which light can be transmitted. The power of the first order soliton reduces when it travels a few soliton periods due to fiber loss. Figure 12.6 shows the propagation of a soliton pulse when the fiber loss parameter is 0.06db/km over a distance of twice dispersion lengths.

Figure 12.6: Soliton propagation in a lossy fiber ( P0 = 0.64 mW , = 0 .06 db / km ,


2 = 20 ps 2 / km , = 0.003 / W / m )

In optical communications, fundamental solitons (N=1) are preferred to higher order solitons. N is the order of the soliton defined by
N 2 = L D L NL

(12.27)

The exact shape of the input pulse used to launch the fundamental soliton is not critical. Moreover, since the fundamental solitons can be formed for values of N in the range 0.5<N<1.5, even the width and the peak power of the input pulse can vary over a wide range without hindering soliton formation. It is this relative insensitivity to the exact value of the input parameter that makes the use of solitons feasible in practical application. The fundamental soliton requires the lowest value of peak power and retains its pulse shape at every step of its propagation, where as solitons of higher order restores its shape only at regular intervals of soliton period and requires higher peak power.

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The soliton period, Z sp is the length of the propagating nonlinear medium at which a soliton of higher order repeats its shape. Z sp is given by equation(12.28) .

2 c 2 Z sp = 2 D

(12.28)

where D is the dispersion parameter, is the wavelength, is the normalizing time ( = t FWHM 1.76 ) and c is the speed of light in vacuum. t FWHM is the full width half maximum of the pulse. The soliton period and soliton order plays a fundamental role in the theory of optical solitons. Only fundamental soliton maintains its shape and remains chirp free during propagation inside optical fibers. Figures 12.7 and 12.8 shows the evolution of a higher order soliton (N =2 and N =3 respectively)[12].

Figure. 12.7: Evolution of a second order soliton

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Figure. 12.8: Evolution of a third order soliton

Although the NLSE supports solitons for both normal and anomalous GVD, pulse like solitons are found only in the case of anomalous dispersion. In the case of normal dispersion ( 2 > 0 ), the solitons exhibit a dip in a constant intensity background. Such solitons are referred to as dark solitons.

Example 12.1

Estimate the peak power requirement of 100 ps soliton to be propagated in a fiber of dispersion parameter 2 ps/nm-km and a non linearity coefficient of 20 /W-km.

Answer:
For fundamental Soliton propagation the ratio of dispersion to nonlinear length (equation 12.15) is to be kept ideally unity, i.e

LD P0T0 = LNL 2 P0 =

=1

2 T0 2

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Also from equation (12.13 ) 2 = 2 (1550) 2 2 = ps 2 / km 5 2 3 10

d 2n D2 = c d 2 2 c

P0 =

2 T0 2

Answer : 1.275 microwatts

Example 12.2

Calculate the maximum allowable fiber dispersion for soliton transmission using EDFA repeaters with soltons of FWHM 100ps and characteristic length (dispersion length ) 600 kms.

Answer:
TFWHM = T0 x 1.76

T LD = FWHM = 600kms (1.76) 2 2

2 =

100 100 = 5.3805 ps 2 / km 1.76 1.76 600


2c 2

D=

= 4.22 ps / nm km

( = 1550 nm since EDFAs are used)

12.3 Soliton based optical links using lumped EDFA repeaters

Optical soliton transmission is expected to be the most promising means for ultra-long distance and extremely high bit rate communication. Since solitons do not suffer distortion from nonlinearity and dispersion which are inherent in fibers, the natural next step is to construct an all-optical transmission system in which fiber loss is compensated by amplification. In fact, the optical transmission systems prior to 1991 required repeaters periodically installed in transmission lines to regenerate optical pulses which have been

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distorted by fiber dispersion and loss. A repeater consists of a light detector and light pulse generators. Consequently, it was the most expensive unit in a transmission system and also was the bottleneck to increase the transmission speed. Repeater less transmission is a very innovative concept that few people believed to be possible. In the absence of realistic optical amplifiers, Hasegawa in 1983 proposed to use the Raman gain of the fiber itself. The idea was used in the first long-distance all-optical transmission experiment by Mollenauer and Smith in 1988. The concept of all-optical transmission using the fiber Raman amplification gave its position to erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) during the 1990s. A digital bit stream can be generated by two distinct modulation formats i.e., non-returnto-zero (NRZ) and return-to-zero (RZ). The reason can be easily understood by noting that the neighboring soliton are well separated. Mathematically, the soliton solution in the Equation(12.10) is valid only when it occupies the entire time window ( < < ). Thus the solution of NLSE for soliton holds only when individual pulses are well separated. This can be ensured by keeping soliton width a small fraction of the bit slot. To achieve this, RZ format (Figure.12.9) has to be used instead of NRZ format when solitons are used as information bits.

TB

Figure. 12.9: Soliton bit steam in RZ format. Each soliton occupies a small fraction of the bit slot so the neighboring solitons are spaced far apart.

The bit rate B and the width of the bit slot TB can be related as B= 1 1 = TB 2 s 0T0
(12.29)

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where 2s 0 =

TB is the normalized separation between neighboring solitons. Typically T0

spacing between the solitons should be below five times the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the pulses. The important merits of soliton pulses for high bit rate long distance transmission are mentioned below 1 2 Solitons can be generated in the loss minimum region at around 1550 nm. Solitons pulse transmission is possible over long distance. Solitons can be both time and polarization multiplexed. 3 There is no waveform distortion over long distances, which are useful for long distance communication. 4 Solitons are dispersion free, and the collision of the solitons is elastic in nature, after collision their amplitude and frequency remain unchanged, only position and phase change. 5 Two counter propagating solitons pass each other without affecting each others motion The all optical transmission system, first introduced by Hasegawa for a soliton system is now commonly employed in present day optical transmission system. The first was proposed by Hasegawa and experimentally demonstrated by Mollenauer and smith uses Raman amplification in transmission fiber itself. Although most of the current all optical transmission system utilize erbium doped fiber amplifiers, Raman amplifiers are reviving now due to their low noise and wide band characteristics. One of the key technological developments that make use of such soliton pulses for our future cost-effective and repeater less communication is the invention of erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA). In long distance soliton propagation, the energy of soliton decreases because of fiber losses. This would produce soliton broadening because a reduced peak power weakens the SPM effect necessary to counteract the effect of GVD. Therefore, to overcome the effect of fiber losses soliton must be amplified periodically using either lumped or distributed amplification scheme. Lumped amplification is useful provided the spacing between amplifiers LA is less than dispersion length LD (LA << LD). For systems having bit rates greater than 10 Gb/s, the condition LA << LD can not be satisfied [13]. In such situation distributed amplification scheme is a better alternative. This scheme is inherently superior

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to lumped amplification because it compensates losses locally at every point along fiber link. Raman fiber amplifiers can be used for distributed gain when fiber carrying the signal is pumped at wavelength about 1480 nm. Another way is to dope lightly the transmission fiber with erbium ions and pump periodically to provide distributed gain. Solitons can be propagated in such active fiber over long distances.

Figure. 12.10:a) Distributed amplification scheme b) Lumped amplification scheme

Use of ultralong dispersion shifted Erbium-doped fiber amplifier in solitons transmission was experimented by Masataka et al. during 1990[14]. Distributed, dispersion-shifted EDFAs with doping concentrations as low as 0.1-0.5 ppm had been fabricated and their gain characteristics were studied for the purpose of soliton amplification for the first time. However, around the end of the 1990s, the Raman concept has regained its position owing to the availability of the high-power semiconductor pump laser and more importantly due to increased demand for the optical bandwidth beyond that covered by EDFAs. In particular, Hasegawas original concept of the Raman amplification by counter propagating pump, which provides a distributed gain that can compensate the distributed fiber loss, is regaining interest as a means of constructing a low-noise and effectively lossless transmission line. Mollenauer, carried on his experiments and finally succeeded in the 4000-km repeaterless transmission experiment. This achievement also leads to the concept of contemporary repeaterless optical transmission systems, with and

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without solitons. This experimental result has attracted serious interest in solitons in the optical communication community. In particular, the invention of EDFAs has enhanced the concept of all-optical transmission systems to more realistic levels as experiment of solitons.

12.4 Issues in Soliton links using lumped EDFA repeaters.


Several issues were found to influence the performance of soliton link using lumped EDFA repeaters. In order to compensate for the loss of the fiber, a common technique is to use the silica fiber doped with rare-earth ions and pumped optically to realize the optical gain. But such amplification schemes introduce noise to the signal which degrades the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), thus imposing a fundamental limit on the system bit error performance. ASE noise present in doped fiber amplifiers cause fluctuations in the central carrier frequency of soliton. This leads to a random fluctuation in the soliton arrival time (GH jitter) which deteriorates BER performance. For high bit rate transmission, the use of ultra short pulses induce higher order effects like the higher order dispersion, self steepening and the Soliton Self Frequency Shift (SSFS). One of the factors limiting the full utilization of bandwidth offered by the soliton communication system is the interaction between adjacent soliton pulses. In the femtosecond regime, a slight difference between the amplitude of two solitons causes a significant change in the soliton-soliton interaction as a result of SSFS. The non instantaneous response of the nonlinear medium that is the SSFS causes amplitude asymmetry between two adjacent solitons and also modifies the soliton interaction. In order to minimize the soliton soliton interaction, it becomes necessary to keep the temporal pulse separation below five times the width of the pulses. For handling more channels it is necessary to achieve wavelength division multiplexing using optical solitons by propagating different carrier frequencies through a channel. The lower order nonlinearities in such systems manifests as Cross Phase Modulation (XPM) and Four Wave Mixing (FWM) which involves multiple channels interfering with each other. In soliton links using lumped EDFA repeaters, the gain of the amplifiers is set exactly equal to the fiber loss between the amplifiers. The gain of such amplifiers is to be kept stable using optical feed back methods, otherwise leads to link instability resulting in vanishing of fundamental solitons or appearance of higher order solitons.

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Issues and challenges faced in the performance improvements of soliton links and the efforts for minimizing the adverse effects are briefly discussed below.

12.4.1

Dispersive wave radiation

The peak power requirement for a soliton pulse to propagate as a fundamental soliton (N =1) is given by equation (12.30) P0 =

2 T0 2

(12.30)

If this power requirement is to be exactly met soliton propagation could not have been possible. Fortunately there exists a range and the worst case limits are given by x +2.54 dB and x-6 dB where x = log (P0). Figure (12.11) shows the worst case limits as well as the limits used in practice for fundamental soliton propagation. If power level in the link goes below 6 db down the absolute (N=1) requirement the soliton disperses away and vanishes. If the power level exceeds 2.54 dB above the absolute requirement the soliton becomes a second order soliton. This is highly undesirable as second order soliton changes it shape periodically and restores the original shape only at regular distances called soliton periods and allocation of optical amplifiers in the link becomes very critical.

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x + 2.54 dB N=1.5

N=1.1 x dB N=1 N=0.9

x - 6 dB

N=0.5

Figure 12.11: Power levels for various amplifier spacing

In both cases soliton sheds energy and it gets dispersed resulting in energy fluctuations. This is called dispersive wave radiation. In addition to this, an important reason for dispersive wave radiation is amplifier gain fluctuations. In a soliton link using lumped

EDFA repeaters the EDFA gain is set equal to fiber loss between two successive repeaters. The gain of such amplifiers is to be stabilized using optical feedback methods. The amplifier gain fluctuation can lead to dispersive wave radiation which in turn will deteriorate the BER performance. It had been reported in the literature that environmental temperature affects EDFA gain. An analytical approach to describe the light pulse amplification using resonant pumped Erbium doped fiber is described in [15] by

incorporating temperature dependence of gain using modified Max-Bloch equations. In multigigabit, long distance soliton links, the gain fluctuations are suppressed to very low desirable levels using optical feedback methods. This is to prevent the link instability due to the vanishing of the fundamental soliton or the appearance of the soliton of higher order depending on whether cumulative effect of gain fluctuations leads to a decrease or an increase of power level in the link. In practice, the value of N is kept slightly above unity (N =1.1) to suppress the dispersive wave radiation as shown by dashed lines in figure (12.11)

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Example 12.3

Determine the upper and lower power level of a second order soliton of TFWHM 10ps, transmitted through a fiber of D= 2 ps/nm-km and =20/ W-km. If the operating wave length is 1550 nms find the distance over which the second order soliton restores its original shape. Answer: Upper power level from equation = T0 = TFWHM x 1.76 =17.6ps and
1.5 2 2

T0 2

2 =

D2 = 2.55 ps 2 / km 2 c

Therefore Upper power level = 0.926 mW Similarly Lower power level = 0.5 2 2

T0 2

= 0.103 mW

Z sp =

T0 2 = 190.71 kms 2 2

Example 12.4:

A 10 Gbps stream of fundamental soliton pulses is launched to a chain of lumped EDFAs with each EDFA gain is set exactly equal to the loss between successive repeaters ( 10 dB ). If gain of all EDFAs in the chain enhances by 1 % , what is the maximum permissible range for fundamental soliton propagation. attenuation is 0.2 dB / Km. Given fiber

23

Answer:
Let Po represent the absolute power requirement for fundamental soliton with N=1, then the maximum power allowed (N=1.5) will be ( Po + 2.54) dB above which

it will transform to a second order pulse. The power output power at the end of link can be a maximum of Po+2.54 dB ( Refer Fig). Po i/p power -

La + 1.01 Po loss Gain n=1

L a
loss

+ 1.01 Po Gain n=2

La + ..
loss

= Po - n La + 1.01 n Po = Po + 2.54 Po

La = 10 dB or La = 50 kms
Po -10 n + 10.1 n =3.54 Po or n = 12.7 which is safely rounded off to 12 Permissible Transmission distance = (n+2) La = 14 x 50 kms = 700 Kms

12.4.2 Gordon Haus jitter


There are two main sources of error which affect the soliton system, fluctuations of pulse energy and of arrival time. At each amplifier, the addition of the ASE noise to a soliton changes its energy and central frequency in a random way. The energy change is identical with that which occurs in a linear system. This is because the system is effectively linear over short distances. The only difference in the soliton system is that in response to its energy change of first order in the noise field the soliton reshapes itself as it propagates. This reshaping is done with no significant change in energy. Thus the signal energy fluctuations at the receiver in the soliton system are essentially the same as those which would occur if the system were linear. The random frequency changes induced by the ASE noise result, because of the needed dispersion, in fluctuations in the arrival time of the soliton. If the soliton gets out of its time slot, an error occurs. This timing jitter was evaluated by Gordon and Haus. In long distance optically amplified soliton communication systems, the limit to channel bit-rate arises from timing jitter in the soliton arrival times due to the GH effect. We found in Chapter 8, that the dominant noise 24

component present in EDFA is the Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) noise. ASE noise results in random fluctuations of soliton carrier frequency. Due to GVD the different solitons arrive at different speeds leads to timing jitter called Gordon Haus jitter. This deteriorates the BER performance. The variance of the soliton arrival time is given by[16],

t 2 = 0.1959n nl h Z 3 F (G ) D Aeff

(12.31)

Where is the fiber loss coefficient, is the amplifiers excess noise parameter, h is the planks constant, Z is the tramission distance, G is the amplifier power gain given by

La where La is the amplifier spacing, Aeff is the fiber effective core area, is the
soliton Full width half maximum, D is the fiber dispersion, nnl is the nonlinear Kerr coefficient and 1 G 1 F (G ) = G ln G
2

(12.32)

is the noise penalty represents the fraction by which input soliton energy should be enhanced to retain same BER performance as the inter amplifier spacing is increased. Error free, single-channel, soliton data transmission at 10 Gb/s over ultra-long distance were achieved by incorporating in-line components to control the effects of amplifier noise . In the case of unlimited propagation, soliton transmission control is implemented using a combination of fixed frequency filters and synchronous modulators. GH jitter can be suppressed by sliding frequency guiding filters, whose inclusion is compatible with wavelength division multiplexing unlike that of synchronous modulation. In straight-line systems, however, both these approaches have implementation problems associated with the remote control and reliability of the required in-line components. An alternative, non system-invasive technique for GH jitter reduction is based on posttransmission dispersion compensation. This technique takes the advantage of the dependence of GH jitter on the sign of dispersion to reverse its growth at the end of a transmission line by appending a dispersion compensating element. However, the potential jitter reduction is limited by associated pulse broadening, to a small fraction of the improvements available through in-line techniques. For a soliton transmission system which uses lumped optical amplifiers with a fixed amplifier spacing and a fixed bit rate,

25

there exists an optimum input pulse width and input amplitude to maximize the soliton transmission distance. In a 10Gbits/s soliton system with a repeater spacing of 40~50 km, a pulse width of 20ps, and normalized amplitude of about 1.4 ~1.8, the limitation owing to mutual soliton interaction is negligible compared with that resulted from the

interaction between the amplifier noise and the soliton pulse, and the soliton pulse could propagate up to the Gordon-Haus (GH) limit.

Example 12.5:

The GH jitter in a soliton link using lumped EDFA repeaters is found to be negligible. If FWHM of soliton pulse is decreased by 10 %. Calculate increase in its peak power requirement. The fiber in the link has a non linearity coefficient of 20 /Wkm and a dispersion parameter 2 ps/nm-km. Comment on BER performance due to

change in pulse width.

Answer:
The peak power requirement is given by P0 =

2 T0 2

T0 changes to 0.9T0 Increased peak power is therefore obtained P0 new =

2 (0.9T0 )
2

1 P0 = 1.2345P0 0.81

The percentage increase in peak power is 23.45%. GH jitter becomes negligible if the bit rate of the system is kept low. This happens when Tau / D ratio is kept above its optimum value (Refer Fig 12.6). At this region a decrease in pulse width improves the Bit Error Rate.

26

12.4.3 Soliton Self Frequency Shift


High speed communication system involves subpicosecond or femtosecond

soliton transmission and the spectrum of the soliton pulse becomes so wide (> 5 THz) that Intrapulse Stimulated Raman Scattering (ISRS) can take place.

(a)
considered . (a) T0 = 100 fs

(b)
(b) T0 = 50 fs

Figure 12.12 . The effects of Raman-induced frequency shift when solitons of different pulse widths are

In many nonlinear media spontaneous Raman scattering converts a small fraction of the incident power from an optical beam to another optical beam at a frequency downshifted by an amount determined by the vibrational modes of the medium. This process is described quantum mechanically as scattering of incident photon by a molecule to a lower frequency photon while at the same time the molecule makes a transition between its two vibrational states. Incident light acts as a pump for generating the frequency shifted radiation called as the stokes wave. For very intense pump waves stimulated Raman scattering can occur in which the Stokes wave grows rapidly inside the medium such that most of the pump energy appears in it. Thus the main effect of ISRS is to transfer energy from the high frequency components to the low frequency of the same pulse [17]. Therefore, the pulse spectrum is shifted towards longer wavelengths as soliton propagates through the fiber. This shift in the carrier frequency reduces the group

27

velocity and slows down the soliton. Figure 12.12 shows the effects of SSFS in the time domain. The SSFS can be compensated by the frequency dependent gain in Distributed Fiber Amplifiers (DFA) leading to what is known as soliton trapping. Adiabatic soliton trapping is observed due to the frequency-dependent gain in fiber amplifiers. The soliton pulse width is practically unaffected by the non resonance of the carrier frequency, while the soliton self-frequency shift becomes very sensitive to this non resonance. The effective component of the gain spectrum for the SSFS compensation is the linearly frequency dependent gain with a positive slope and there exists an optimal compensation component. Although inter pulse Raman scattering can suppress the frequency downshifts, it is cross phase modulation (XPM) that has a more significant effect.

12.4.4 Soliton soliton interaction


One of the important issues which affect the performance of a high speed soliton based system is adjacent soliton-soliton interaction. A nonlinear interaction between solitons can result in a significant reduction of bandwidth of soliton based optical

communication system. An important design parameter of soliton lightwave system is the pulse width T. As discussed earlier each soliton pulse occupies only a fraction of the bit slot. For practical reasons one would like to place solitons as tightly as possible. However, the presence of pulse in the neighboring ring bits perturbs the soliton simply because the combined optical field is not as solution of NLS equation. This phenomena is referred to as soliton soliton interaction. The same nonlinearity that bounds a single soliton also introduces an interaction force between the neighboring solitons. The amplitude of a soliton pair at the fiber input can be written in the normalized form as u (0, ) = sec h( q 0 ) + r sec h[ + q 0 )]e j (12.33)

Where r is relative amplitude, is the relative phase, and the initial separation q0 is related to the bit rate by B= 1 0.88 = 2q 0T0 q 0TFWHM (12.34)

28

Soliton interaction can be studied by solving the nonlinear Schrdinger equation numerically with input from equation (12.33). However considerable insight is gained if the inverse scattering method is used. Such studies shows that interaction depends not only on the soliton separation q0 but also on the relative phase and the relative amplitude r . The periodic collapse of neighboring solitons is undesirable from the system standpoint. One way to avoid the interaction problem is to increase the soliton separation such that z p >> LT , where LT is the transmission distance, z p = Z sp exp(q 0 ) is the collapse distance, and Z sp is the soliton period given by equation(12.28). Since
z p Z sp 22,000 for q 0 = 10 , such a separation is large enough for most communication

systems. The bit rate is the limited by equation (12.34), but can approach 45 Gb/s if we use 2-ps solitons for data transmission. As discussed in section 12.4.3 soliton selffrequency shift (SSFS) is a dominant factor in femtosecond soliton transmission because it is inversely proportional to the fourth power of pulse width. Since the pulse width is directly related to the soliton amplitude, fluctuation in the latter may cause significant changes in the femtosecond soliton-soliton interaction as a result of SSFS. Analysis of femtosecond soliton interactions in a lossless transmission line, was done by Kenji Kurokawa et al. in 1994. Figure. 12.13 shows the pulse waveforms when pulse pairs under in phase condition. The input pulses are N = 1 solitons with a pulse width of 400 fs. When the input pulse pair is in phase, ( = 0) soliton interaction (collision) occurs at around
Z Z sp = 6 as shown in figure. 12.13(a) , where Z sp is the soliton period. When

soliton interaction occurs, the output pulse narrows and the spectral width broadens and when the propagation is beyond 8 times soliton period the pulse shapes have been destroyed. As in Figure 12.3 (b) when pulses are out of phase, ( = ) the pulse

deformation is not significant. For a 80 Gbit/s soliton transmission in an operating regime beyond average soliton limit the dispersive waves and soliton interaction limits the total transmission distance to ~500 kms .

29

Figure. 12.13 Femtosecond soliton interaction with the SSFS when phase difference between pulse pair is changed . (a) when starting input pulses are in phase and (b) when starting input pulses are out of phase in a lossless transmission fiber.

The limitations to the maximum transmission capacity in a long distance soliton transmission system with sliding guiding filters were studied during 1993. Sliding the centre frequency of the filters will substantially stabilize the soliton even in the case of strong resonance overlap with the radiation that originates from the periodic amplification. This permits a considerable reduction of both the minimum pulse width and pulse-to-pulse separation in the transmission. High bit rate, soliton-based light wave systems are attracting considerable interest as they are expected to significantly increase the capacity of fibre-optic communication links. However, until 1993, stable transmission of solitons was achieved in the so called average-soliton (or guiding centre-soliton) regime characterized by the amplifier spacing being much smaller than the soliton period. Higher bit rates with practical amplifier spacing required the use of shorter solitons having a soliton period shorter than the amplifier spacing. In such a case the concept of average solitons is not valid for describing soliton propagation as quasi-adiabatic. From numerical simulations it can be concluded that the system performance is affected not only by soliton-soliton interaction but also by the interaction between solitons and dispersive waves. Two ways of improving the system performance are available such as the use of saturable absorbers and synchronous modulators. The use of fast saturable absorbers could eliminate interaction between solitons and dispersive waves and increase the transmission 30

distance above 1000km. The soliton-soliton interaction can be made virtually ineffective by using synchronous modulation. Such a lightwave system transmits a high bit-rate (50100Gbit/s) soliton stream over transoceanic distances while keeping amplifier spacing much larger than the soliton period.

12.4. 5 Amplifier gain stability


In a soliton link using lumped EDFA repeaters the EDFA gain is set equal to fibre loss between two successive repeaters. In multi gigabit, long distance soliton links, the gain fluctuations are suppressed to very low desirable levels using optical feedback methods The amplifier gain fluctuation can lead to dispersive wave radiation and subsequent energy fluctuations which in turn will deteriorate the BER performance. The gain of such amplifiers can fluctuate due to several reasons which includes the input signal level and temperature fluctuations. The use of optical feed back methods become mandatory as the conventional electronic feed back fails to respond to a multi gigabit data stream. The environmental temperature can also affect EDFA gain. An analytical approach to describe the temperature dependent gain in light pulse amplification using resonant

pumped EDFA is described in [18]. Models based on rate equations fail when the light pulse width becomes very narrow and comparable to the dipole relaxation time. The model which describes the amplification of light pulses ranging from sub picoseconds to hundreds of picoseconds is based on Maxwell-Bloch equations. The amplifier gain fluctuations can also lead to the soliton link instability. It can cause the vanishing of the fundamental soliton or the appearance of the soliton of higher order depending on whether cumulative effect of gain fluctuations leads to a decrease or an increase of power level in the link.

12.5 Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of soliton links 12.5.1 Introduction

In soliton communication systems, the power of the soliton pulse is to be retained between specific limits set for fundamental soliton propagation. Because of the fiber attenuation the power of the launched soliton attenuates and as a result ceases to propagate as a soliton. For this reason solitons are to be amplified periodically to preserve

31

its properties. Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers can be used for this purpose either as lumped repeaters or as distributed amplifiers. Introduction of EDFAs in the link leads to the amplifier noise called Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) which in turn affects bit error rate performance. The Gain of such amplifiers in long link is to be stabilized using optical feed back methods to support very high data rates and to retain power of pulses between specific limits. Amplifier gain fluctuations can lead to energy fluctuations which in turn leads to BER performance. Moreover when N=1.1 soliton is launched it will shed its excess energy to evolve as a fundamental soliton which results in energy fluctuations in the link ( called dispersive wave radiation ). ASE and Energy fluctuations are major reasons for bit error in soliton based systems

12.5.2 BER Analysis


Let us now derive a simple approximate analytical formula for the optimal fiber dispersion by using the Gaussian approximation for both the timing bit error and the energy bit error. Based on this analytical formula of the optimal fiber dispersion, we can determine the maximum transmission capacity of a soliton-based communication system limited by the ASE noise of the amplifiers. In evaluating the energy bit error, we assume that the detector consists of an optical filter with bandwidth B0, followed by a photo detector cascaded with an integrate-and-dump filter. In the analysis, the concept of the path-averaged soliton is used. The path averaged soliton energy is given by[19]

E = 0.883 Aeff D cn2

(12.35)

where Aeff is the fiber effective core area, is the soliton Full width half maximum, D is the fiber dispersion, c is the speed of light in vacuum, n2 is the nonlinear Kerr coefficient,

is the central wavelength in vacuum.


The accumulated ASE noise of the amplifiers can cause fluctuations in the soliton arrival time leading to what is known as Gordan- Haus effect. On the other hand, similar to the case of linear transmission systems, the accumulated ASE noise also causes the fluctuation of the soliton energy. Path averaged power of the accumulated ASE noise is given by N 0 = hZF (G ) (12.36)

32

where is the fiber loss coefficient, is the amplifiers excess noise parameter, h is the planks constant, is the optical frequency, Z is the transmission distance, G is the amplifier power gain and F (G ) is the noise penalty defined in equation(12.32). Let us now define the signal to noise ratio S = E . Assume that y represents the output N0

of the detector which is the total energy integrated over one bit period, and let x = y N 0 . Let x = y N 0 . Let 2 M = 2 KB0T + 1 , where T is the bit period, K = 1 for polarized noise and K = 2 for an un-polarized noise, 2M is the dimensionality of the space of the space of the detected optical field from the sampling theorem. The sampling theorem says that the detected optical field has approximately 2M independent Degrees of Freedom, and without loss of generality the soliton may considered to occupy just one of these. The mean ASE noise energy per DOF is one half the equi-partition energy N
0

2.

Thus if ONE is present, the probability density function (PDF) of x is given by the chisquared PDF f1 ( x) = (x S )
( M 1 2 )

exp( x S ) I M 1 (2 xS )

(12.37)

where I n denotes the n th order modified Bessel function of the first kind. If a zero is present, the PDF of x is given by the poison distribution as f0 = x M 1 exp( x) ( M 1)! (12.38)

Hence if a ONE is detected the mean of x is S + M and the variance is 2 S + M and if a ZERO is detected the mean and the variance of x is M . S is the ratio of unperturbed soliton energy to the noise equipartition energy. In the variances the term M represents the spontaneous beat noise, where as the term 2S represents the signal spontaneous beat noise. As an approximation we treat x as a Gaussian random variable. In order to decide whether ZERO or ONE is detected we set a decision level, the decision level is set as E d and let r = E d N 0 . The probability of mistaking a ONE for a ZERO is obtained as
S +M r P1 = Q 2S + M

(12.39)

33

where Q( Q(a ) =

) denotes the Marcum-Q function defined as

1 2

exp( x
a

2)dx

(12.40)

The probability of mistaking a ZERO for a ONE is obtained as


rM P0 = Q M

(12.41)

If the occurrence of a ONE and a ZERO are equiprobable then the BER will have a minimum value given by
S BERe = Q M + 2S + M

(12.42)

For a soliton system using lumped amplifiers, the Gordon-Haus effect results, i.e., the variance of the soliton arrival time is given by equation (12.31). The arrival time of a soliton can be regarded as a Gaussian random variable. If the detection window is 2t w , the timing error rate is[20]

BERt = 2Q(t w t )

(12.43)

The total BER performance of the link is obtained by combining the effects of energy errors and timing error and the expression for the BER is[20]
S BER = Q M + 2S + M + 2Q(t w t )

(12.44)

An ANFIS based method for performance optimization of soliton links using lumped EDFA repaters with non uniform spacing is presented in [21] The variations in BERe and BERt are plotted interesting facts. as a function of D reveal many

34

Figure 12.14: The variations in bit error rate due to timing jitter

It can be observed from Figures 12.14 and 12.15 that BERt increases with decrease in D and BERe increases with increase in D .

Figure 12.15: The variations in bit error rate due to energy fluctuations

BERe and BERt are mutually exclusive and BER is given by sum BERt and BERe. It can be easily observed from figure 12.16 that there exists an optimum value of ratio D for which BER is a minimum.

35

Figure 12.16 The variations in bit error rate due to energy fluctuations and timing jitter

In order to examine the effect of inter amplifier spacing in BER performance, the spacing is varied keeping all other parameters fixed. The effect is shown in the figure12.17. It appears that the amplifier spacing can be increased by using low attenuation fiber or by using high gain amplifiers. Though a low attenuation fiber allows larger repeater spacing, a higher value of amplifier gain would not serve this purpose. This is due to the timing jitter caused by amplified spontaneous emission noise. ASE noise causes fluctuations in soliton carrier frequency, which in turn leads to a random arrival time for solitons due to fiber distortion.

Figure 12.17 The variations in bit error rate for various values of amplifier spacing

The BER performance of the system, when amplifier spacing is changed, keeping all other parameters fixed except that the amplifier gain now adjusted to a value which compensates for fiber loss between amplifiers. It is found that if the amplifier spacing is

36

increased the BER deteriorates where as with a decrease in the amplifier spacing the BER improves. There is an optimum value for the ratio D corresponding to minimum BER that is unaffected by change in repeater spacing. The influence of transmission distance on BER performance is depicted in the figure 12.18.

Figure 12.18 The variations in bit error rate for various values of transmission distance

The value of optimum D shifts towards right (increases) in the figure12.18. This is true in the case of increase in bit rate also, except for overlapping of curves before optimum D .

Figure 12.19: BER performance of the system for various values of bit rate

as shown in the Figure 12.19. The overlapping is due to the fact that the BERe is not much influenced by reduced pulse width at high bit rates

37

A very important observation is that the BER performance gets improved as the inter amplifier spacing is decreased and vice versa. From the above results one can easily conclude that a soliton link performance enhancement in terms of distance of transmission, reduced BER, increased bit rate of transmission or a combination of all the three can be obtained simply by using more number of amplifiers
12.6 Design of Soliton Links

The use of soliton for optical fiber communication requires substantial changes in the system design compared with the conventional non soliton systems. Design steps of Soliton Links using lumped EDFA repeaters are given below: Step 1: Set Design Goals: Transmission distance, Bit rate and Bit error rate (BER) Step 2: Find the range pulse widths that satisfies bit rate and avoids soliton soliton interaction. Eg: 10 Gbps bit rate corresponds to 1/10 nano seconds or 100 pico second bit period. To avoid soliton soliton interaction pulse width is kept below one fifth of bit period. Maximum permissible pulse width therefore is 20 ps Step 3: Plot D Vs BER curves for different inter amplifier spacing. Step 4: Select D curve for which optimum BER is relatively closer to desired BER Step 5: Find the range of D values, given width of the pulse launched from Soliton source. Use monomode fiber with dispersion parameter estimated in the range. Step 6: Estimate the power output of soliton source for fundamental soliton propagation (keep N= 1.1). Use the equation (12.30) Step 7: Choose a fiber with lowest value of attenuation possible. Step 8: Design EDFA repeater with Power gain = (Inter amplifier spacing x fiber attenuation) Step 9: It is required to design a GH suppression filter if BERt is high (for very high bit rate systems), estimate the new jitter variance and the carry out steps 1 to 8.
12.7 Performance improvements of Soliton links using lumped EDFA repeaters.

Performance improvement of links in terms of increased rate or BER or a combination of three can be achieved.

transmission distance or bit

38

12.7.1 Transmission distance

We consider a soliton link with its point of operation in BER performance curve as shown in figure (12.18). If the transmission distance increased the BER curve changes to a new curve shifted towards right with a deteriorating BER performance. To retain same BER performance we need to use a new D . This value of D should be practically realizable. If it is not satisfying constraints on bit rate and soliton-soliton interaction we have to construct new D curves varying (decreasing) the inter amplifier spacing till a desired BER is achieved and yields a feasible D .
12.7.2 Bit rate

Increasing bit rate modifies BER performance as depicted in Figure 12.19. BER performance deteriorates and the curve shifts upward if operating D ratio is less than

D corresponding to optimum BER. If operating D ratio is greater than D corresponding to optimum BER an increase bit rate can be achieved without any
modification. However this is possible only for higher values of D where the soliton based systems are not really essential.
12.7.3 Bit Error Rate (BER)

An improvement in BER performance can be achieved by decreasing the inter amplifier spacing without affecting the D ratio. This is possible because change in repeater spacing results in change in BER performance without any other change in the system as shown in Figure 12.17. A performance improvement which involves a combination

above cases can also be achieved by considering one after another.


12.8 Limitations of Soliton Based Systems

Soliton based systems offer very high data rates ( multi gigabits per second ) over very long distances (intercontinental ). Main drawback of such systems is the requirement of continuous fiber loss compensation. This necessitates the deployment of optical

amplifiers with reduced inter amplifier spacing, typically in each 20-25 km distance. The ultimate capacity of such systems is still limited by GH jitter and the energy fluctuations. The GH jitter is due to ASE noise in doped fiber ampliers and can be suppressed by using FRAs, but at the cost of reduced pump efficiency. The dispersive wave radiation is

39

enhanced due to the amplifier gain fluctuations which has to be controlled using complex optical feed back methods. However the over all data rate in supported by a soliton based communication link can be further enhanced by use of WDM solitons.
12.9 Summary

network or

Resilience to Group Velocity Dispersion (GVD) makes optical solitons attractive

for

multi gigabit data transmission by exploiting the ultimate capacity of the optical fibres. In optical fibres solitons can evolve by choosing appropriate pulse and fibre parameters to obtain a counter balancing of GVD and Self Phase Modulation (SPM). Theory of soliton evolution and soliton communication links using lumped EDFA repeaters was discussed. The major reasons for bit error are Amplified Spontaneous Emission ( ASE ) noise in EDFAs which leads to Gordon Haus jitter and dispersive wave radiations which leads to energy fluctuations in the link. Bit Error Rate performance of soliton links using lumped EDFA repeaters was analyzed. Design steps for realizing such links and their performance enhancement methods were discussed.
Review Questions

12.1 Distinguish between (a) SPM and GVD (b) ASE and ESA 12.2 Define (a) Dispersion length of fiber (b) Non linear length of fiber (c) Gordon Haus jitter (d) Soliton period (e) Soliton Self Frequency Shift (SSFS) 12.3 Find the dispersion parameter of the fiber to be used in a soliton link using lumped EDFA repeaters operating at 8 Gbps with 100 amplifiers uniformly spaced over 1000kms. 12.4 What are the reasons for bit error in a soliton link using lumped EDFA repeaters? What is the optimum BER? 12.5 Calculate the noise penalty F(G) for a soliton link operating with inter amplifier spacing of 20 kms using fiber of attenuation coefficient 0.1 db/Km 12.6 What is the order of a soliton pulse ? Why fundamental solitons are preferred to higher order ones for optical communications? 12.7 An N=2 soliton is launched to a fiber with alpha 0.15 db/Km explain distance at which it becomes N=1 soliton.

40

12.8 A soliton of peak power 1 mw and wavelength 1 microns is to be launched to a fiber of dispersion parameter D 1 ps/nm km with non linearity co efficient of 10 /W-km. Calculate the dispersion and the nonlinear lengths.
References

[1] [2] [3] [4]

J. S. Russell, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, 1978, P.319 A. Hasegawa, F. Tappert, Appl. Phys. Lett.23(3), 144 (1973) L. F. Mollenauer, R. H. Stolen, J. P. Gordon, Phys. Rev. Lett.45(13),1095( 1980). N.Vijayakumar, Nisha S.Nair, Journal of optoelectronics and advanced materials,9(12), 3702-3714( 2007). [5] L.F. Mollenauer, R.H Stolen and J.P Gordon, Optics Letters,10(5),229(1985). [6] Suzuki, K., M. Nakazawa, E. Yamada, and Y. Kimura, Electron. Lett. 26(8), 551(1990). [7] M. Nakazawa, E. Yamada, H. Kubota, K. Suzuki, Electron. Lett.27(14), 1270(1991). [8] L. F. Mollenauer, M. J. Neubelt, M. Haner, E. Lichtman, S. G. Evangelides, B. M. Nyman, Electron. Lett.27(22), 2055(1991). [9] M. Nakazawa, Ultrahigh-speed optical soliton communication and soliton transmission control, in Opt. Soc. Amer. Conf. Ed., 1993 Tech. Dig. Ser, 1993, P. 158 [10] N. Vijayakumar and Nisha S. Nair, International conference on nonlinear waves: Theory and Experiment, Tashkent. Uzbekistan,Vol.1, p37, January 15-19, 2008 [11] Sien Chi, Chir-Weei Chang, J. Optics Communications, 106, pp 193-196, 1994 [12] Govind P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics , Academic Press,2005 [13] Govind P. Agrawal, Applications of Nonlinear Fiber Optics, 3rd. Edition, 2006, Academic Press. [14] Masataka Nakazawa, Yasuo Kimura, Kazunori Suzuki, IEEE J. Quantum Electron.26(12), 2103(1990) [15] N. Vijayakumar, S.S Pathak, International conference on Fiber optics and photonics, IIT Delhi, 1998, pp.674 [16] J. P. Gordon and H.A. Haus, Optics letters, 11,p 665-667. [17] Kenji Kurokawa, Hirokazu Kubota, Masataka Nakazawa, IEEE J. Quantum Electronics30(9),2220 (1994) [18] N. kagi, A. Oyobe and N. Nakamura, J. of Light wave technology, 9(2),pp261,1991 [19] J.P. Gordon and L.F. Mollenauer, J. of lightwave technology, 9(2),p170-173,1991 [20] X. Tang and P. Ye , J. Optics Communications,103,pp 63 66, 1993. [21] N. Vijayakumar and Nisha S Nair, An ANFIS based method for design optimization of soliton based links, International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering (ICCC-08), IEEE Communications Society, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, p565, 2008

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