Sliding window criterion codes and concatenation scheme for mitigating timing-jitter-induced errors in WDM fiber transmissions

Abstract

We propose a concatenated coding scheme, which effectively reduces bit errors induced by soliton-soliton collisions (SSC) in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) soliton transmission systems. A block line coding scheme, the sliding window criterion (SWC) code, is developed based on the nature of SSC-induced timing jitter in soliton communications. We show, by simplified collision model simulations, that the SWC code alone can decrease the SSC-induced timing jitter and, by concatenation to a Reed-Solomon (RS) code, improve both the bit rate and the channel spacing capacity in WDM systems. We compare the performance of our scheme both analytically and by simulations with those of various RS codes and concatenated RS-convolutional code used in optical fiber transmission systems, and show that high redundancy (overhead) does not always give better code performance. Finally, by using full simulations, we show that the SWC code is an effective and promising technique for dispersion-managed fiber WDM systems.