Disintegration of a soliton in a dispersion-managed optical communication line with random parameters

The propagation of dispersion-managed solitons in optical fiber links with a random dispersion map has been studied. Two types of randomness are considered: random dispersion magnitudes and random lengths of the spans. By numerical simulations, disintegration of a soliton propagating in such an optical communication line is shown to occur. It is observed that the stability of the soliton propagation is affected more by modulations of the dispersion magnitudes of the spans than by modulations of the span lengths. Results of numerical simulations of the soliton breakup distance confirm theoretical predictions in the averaged dynamics limit; (C) 2000 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 060.5530, 260.2030, 000.4430.