SOLITON-BASED RETURN-TO-ZERO TRANSMISSION OVER TRANSOCEANIC DISTANCESBY PERIODIC DISPERSION COMPENSATION

The accumulation of Gordon-Haus jitter can be effectively suppressed b y the use of periodic dispersion com pensation and in-line optical fil ters. The feasibility of 20-Gbit/s soliton-based transoceanic systems has been confirmed through 1000-km loop transmission experiments and 8 100-km straight-line transmission experiments that employed periodic d ispersion compensation. For a 20-Gbit/s, 9000-km transmission system, a Q(2) of 19 dB, a sufficient power window of 2.5 dB, and robustness t o repeater output power reduction have been demonstrated, as has compa tibility with the conventional supervision scheme. A dramatic increase in system capacity can be expected from soliton wavelength-division m ultiplexing with periodic compensation of dispersion and its slope. (C ) 1997 Optical Society of America.