Soliton Pulse Source Research Articles

Rate multiplication of a 59-GHz soliton source at 1550 nm

We demonstrate an all-optical scheme to multiply the repetition frequency of a high-rate optical pulse train by using a spectral filter to remove unwanted frequency components. A stable 58.5-GHz soliton pulse source at 1542 nm is filtered with a Fahry-Perot interferometer to achieve 117 and 175.5 GWz output pulse trains. This scheme is generally applicable to rate multiplication of mode-locked pulse trains using various types of spectral filters. All-optical rate conversion of continuous pulse trains may find applications in time division multiplexed optical networks at high bit rates, where electronic methods are cumbersome.

Dynamic optical soliton communication

Digitally coded optical solitons at 5 and 10 Gb/s have been successfully transmitted over 400 and 300 km, respectively, using erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and repeaters. The soliton pulse source is a gain-switched distributed-feedback laser diode with spectral windowing. The repeater spacing for the 10-Gb/s transmission with an input soliton of A=1.4 is 25 km, which is extended to 50 km for 5-Gb/s transmission with an input soliton of N=1.8-2.0. >