Abstract

It is now widely recognized that the so-called technique of dispersion management represents a major headway for both NRZ and soliton communication systems (for a recent review, see [1,2]). Thanks to a low average dispersion, the Gordon-Haus timing jitter, deleterious to soliton systems, can be minimized and the observed enhancement of the pulse's energy implies a better signal-to-noise ratio, hence improving the bit-error rate at the reception. The main predictions of numerical simulations having been confirmed experimentally [3,4], it now seems natural to look for simple design tools in order to optimize future dispersion-managed soliton communication links.

© 1998 Optical Society of America