Optical Conveyor Belts: A New Scheme for Fiber Communications
P. D. Miller, N. N. Akhmediev, and A. Ankiewicz
Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre
Optical Sciences Centre
Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering
The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia
Abstract:
A scheme is proposed for high-bandwidth, robust data transmission in silica fibers at wavelengths below 1.3 microns. The scheme is based on trains of gray solitons, but the solitons themselves do not carry any information. Rather, the signal is encoded in pulses of small but otherwise arbitrary amplitude in the orthogonal polarization and is carried along, without dispersion, by the soliton wavetrain. Data pulses carried by gray solitons of differing contrast do not interfere with each other when the solitons collide, so this allows many channels, each associated with a different contrast, to be muliplexed on the same fiber.