Soliton transmission at 20 Gbit/s over2 000 km in Tokyo metropolitan optical network

Abstract
Experimental field transmissions of solitons at 20 Gbit/s over 2 000 km have been successfully demonstrated using part of the Tokyo metropolitan optical network consisting of conventional dispersion-shifted fibre cables. The soliton pulse width was 10 ps and a polarisation-insensitive MQW electroabsorption modulator was used for demultiplexing. The power penalty at a BER of 10-10 was ~3.5 dB.