UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO COLORADO SPRINGS

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

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Dispersion Management for Randomly Varying Optical Fibers

Jamison T. Moeser

Department of Applied Math

University of Colorado at Boulder

In modern optical fiber links, random variations in various fiber characteristics can become a major limitation to long-scale pulse propagation.  We present an asymptotic theory for optical pulse propagation in dispersion managed (DM) fibers whose accumulated dispersions profiles are piecewise linear with random slope.  The validity of this theory can be shown analytically and is verified with direct numerical simulation.  The equation that describes the slow evolution of initial pulses possesses a stationary solution which is a minimizer for a related variational problem.  These special solutions have potential for use as bit-carriers in an optical fiber link, and for fibers with moderate noise in the dispersion profile, perform much better than ideal DM solitons optimized for the same fiber.