Limits of long-distance soliton transmission in optical fibers with laser diodes as pulse sources

To employ soliton transmission in practical optical fiber communication systems, it is desired that semiconductor laser diodes (LDs) can be used as the optical soliton sources. The authors show that, when pulses generated by LDs are used for soliton transmission, the large frequency noise of LDs causes jitter in soliton arrival times, and makes a limit on the bit-rate distance product of the soliton transmission system. This limit is shown to be proportional to the square root of the output peak power of the pulses generated by LDs, and has a value of 12800 GHz-km for pulses with an output peak power of 10 mW and a duration of 20 ps.<
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