Disintegration of a soliton in a dispersion-managed optical communication line with random parameters

The propagation of dispersion-managed solitons in optical fiber links with a random dispersion map has been studied. Two types of randomness are consi dered: random dispersion magnitudes and random lengths of the spans. By num erical simulations, disintegration of a soliton propagating in such an opti cal communication line is shown to occur. It is observed that the stability of the soliton propagation is affected more by modulations of the dispersi on magnitudes of the spans than by modulations of the span lengths. Results of numerical simulations of the soliton breakup distance confirm theoretic al predictions in the averaged dynamics limit; (C) 2000 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 060.5530, 260.2030, 000.4430.