Long haul fiber optic transmission:
Applied optics in telecommunications


Long haul fiber optic transmission is the backbone of the information technologies today. The inventions of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) techniques and optical amplifiers enabled the bandwidth explosion. State-of-the-art fiber optic transmission systems are facing the fundamental limits of amplifier spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and fiber nonlinearity. I will describe optical solitons and its advantages in long haul transmission. Through numerical simulations, I will show that timing jitters, i.e., the randomness in pulse arrival times, caused by soliton collisions are the main limitation of a WDM soliton system. Innovations for solving the timing jitter problem will be presented. First, I will show the design of a temporal lens and demonstrate both numerically and experimentally its effectiveness in compensating the timing jitters. Second, I will present our latest breakthroughs in creating a jitter-free transmission format, which is particularly useful in dense WDM and has already generated new excitements in fiber optic communications. Finally, I will discuss the new challenges and opportunities.