STIMULATED BRILLOUIN-SCATTERING FROM TRAINS OF SOLITONS IN OPTICAL FIBERS - INFORMATION DEGRADATION

The limitation on information flux in soliton-based optical-fiber communication that is due to stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is analyzed by means of the space-time three-wave resonant model for SBS. We show that a continuous train of well-separated solitons excites SBS above a bit-rate threshold f(bit)thd and that SBS degrades the information after some critical transmission length L(c). General simple formulas gives f(bit)thd, the SBS gain, and L(c) as functions of the fiber characteristics. A large range of threshold values is obtained, depending principally on the soliton phase distribution and on the fiber dispersion. For trains of solitons in phase, f(bit)thd is approximately 0.7 Gbit/s for normally dispersive (n.d.) fibers and approximately 3.3 Gbits/s for dispersion-shifted (d.-s.) fibers, whereas for trains of solitons uncorrelated in phase the bit-rate threshold goes from approximately 21 Gbits/s for n.d. fibers to approximately 440 Gbits/s for d.-s. fibers.