Reduction in timing jitter by chirp selection for externally modulated return to zero optical soliton pulse at 10 Gb/s

Abstract

We investigate the chirp selection of externally modulated RZ soliton pulse at 10 Gb/s for fiber optical communication systems for the reduction in timing jitter. We have chosen single arm Mach–Zehnder amplitude modulator with sin 2 electrical shaped input–output ( P– V) characteristic and its chirp range has been varied in the range of −5 to 5. The timing jitter, Q factor and bit error rate (BER) generated for the chirp range has been studied for various fiber lengths and post compensation has been demonstrated to reduce the timing jitter. The number of fixed output amplifiers after every 60 km span is varied from 2 to 10 and corresponding accumulated ASE noise has been studied to manage timing jitter and BER in permissible range, i.e. 5 ps and 10 −9, respectively. It is observed that when two fiber spans are taken then the compensating fiber length for the system is less than 20 km for each case of the chirp considered. For 10 fiber spans, the compensating fiber length increases in the range 60–90 km depending upon the value of chirp taken. Finally it is shown that the chirp value of external modulator should be set to either 0 or −1 for externally modulated RZ soliton pulse in 10 Gb/s optical communication system which makes the system more insensitive to the timing jitter and the selection of dispersion compensating fiber length.