10-Gb/s transmission of NRZ over 10000 km and solitons over 13500 km error-free in the same dispersion-managed system

A dispersion management scheme that is capable of supporting both dispersion-managed solitons and nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) data formats as well as intermediate formats is demonstrated for error-free long-haul transmission at 10 Gb/s in excess of 9500 km. This experimental tool ran be used to directly compare the different data formats. Our results suggest that a format between standard solitons and standard NRZ, such as dispersion-managed solitons or phase-modulated NRZ, may have significant advantages.