20 Gbit/s-1850 km and 40 Gbit/s-750 km soliton data transmissions using erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

Abstract

Recently, soliton transmission technology has matured considerably through the use of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs).1,2 In order to show that soliton transmission has several advantages over conventional IM/DD or coherent systems, it is now important to undertake single-pass long-distance high-speed data transmission experiments with pseudo random signals, as has already been demonstrated in high-speed linear systems with NRZ signals.3-5 In response to this need, soliton experiments such as 5 Gbit/s-3000 km, 10 Gbit/s-1200 km, and 20 Gbit/s-1020 km (under a completely penalty-free condition) transmissions have been reported recently.6-8 However, the possibility of extending the transmission distances and increasing the bit-rates are still under investigation. In this paper, we report for the first time 20 Gbit/s over 1850 km and 40 Gbit/s over 750 km single-pass soliton data transmission experiments.