Dispersion-managed solitons in transmission lines with loss and gain

Summary form only given. Dispersion management (DM) is considered to be the key technique for high bit rate optical transmission lines. To optimize the performance of the system one needs to know the stationary solution, i.e. the dispersion-managed (DM) soliton. Launching pulses that correspond exactly to that DM solitons minimizes the continuum radiation spreading out of the signal and destroying it. Usually losses and gain are disregarded in deriving the DM soliton shape. This approximation has led to the result that DM solitons are always chirp-free at the point where they have a minimum width. To describe pulse propagation in DM lines we use the modified nonlinear Schrodinger equation including losses and periodic amplification.