Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Solitons

In fiber optic communication, bandwidth and data capacity can be reduced by pulse spreading. The methods employed for this are operation at zero dispersion wavelength and usage of highly coherent light sources. Production of solitons is the recent development in this category. A soliton is a pulse that travels along a fiber without changing shape. Broadening of pulses occurs due to dispersion. Due to dispersion, some wavelength component of the light source travel faster than other wavelengths. To form a soliton, the initial original pulse must have a particular peak energy and pulse shape. The product of pulse energy and pulse width should always remain a constant. The value of this constant is dependent on the dispersion and amount of non-linearity of the fiber. There is no escape from attenuation even for solitons. Fiber amplifier is a must even while using solitons. The data rates of solitons with width a few picoseconds are over 10 Gbps.

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