Dispersion-managed electrical transmission lines

Abstract

We examine the ability of electrical pulses to execute a highly stable propagation in a special electrical network made of concatenated pieces of discrete electrical lines with alternately positive and negative signs of the second-order dispersion. We show that such networks, called dispersion-managed electrical lines, induce a pulse breathing phenomenon, that is a dynamical behaviour with alternate regimes of pulse broadening and compression. This breathing phenomenon, which prevents the pulse from broadening without bounds during propagation in the network is the most appealing feature of the technique of dispersion management developed in the last decade in the area of optical communications. Meanwhile, we show that the benefit of using dispersion management in ETLs is strongly mitigated by the third-order dispersion and the losses at the junction points between adjacent pieces of line. These come into play as major factors of impairment for the pulse robustness with a much stronger impact than in dispersion-managed optical transmission lines.