Role of distributed amplification in designing high-capacity soliton systems

We discuss the importance of distributed amplication for high-speed soliton communication systems though numerical simulations by considering the dist ributed gain provided by stimulated Raman scattering or erbium dopants. Hyb rid amplication schemes are also considered. At a bit rate of 40 Gb/s, the use of distributed amplication is found to improve the transmission distanc e (deduced from the Q parameter) by a factor of up to three for Raman ampli cation and > 5 for erbium dopants, compared with the case of lumped amplifi ers. The increase in transmission distance is by a factor of about two for 80-Gb/s soliton systems when dense dispersion management is used. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.