On the Achievable Communication Rates of Generalized Soliton Transmission Systems

We analyze the achievable communication rates of a generalized soliton-based transmission system for the optical fiber channel. This method is based on modulation of parameters of the scattering domain, via the inverse scattering transform, by the information bits. The decoder uses the direct spectral transform to estimate these parameters and decode the information message. Unlike ordinary On-Off Keying (OOK) soliton systems, the solitons' amplitude may take values in a continuous interval. A considerable rate gain is shown in the case where the waveforms are 2-bound soliton states. Using traditional information theory and inverse scattering perturbation theory, we analyze the influence of the amplitude fluctuations as well as soliton arrival time jitter, on the achievable rates. Using this approach we show that the time of arrival jitter (Gordon-Haus) limits the information rate in a continuous manner, as opposed to a strict threshold in OOK systems.