Long span repeaterless transmission using adiabatic solitons

Abstract

We demonstrate transmission of 10 Gb/s data over 296 km without inline amplification using adiabatically propagating optical solitons as the data carrier. Adiabatic soliton propagation suppresses the deleterious effects of self-phase modulation and stimulated Brillouin scattering, allowing higher optical powers at the transmitter. The system power budget is also enhanced by the narrowing of the optical bandwidth under adiabatic propagation, allowing improved receiver sensitivity. We show that the technique may ultimately enable repeaterless spans in excess of 500 km.