20 Gb/s optical soliton data transmission over 70 km using distributed fiber amplifiers

20 Gb/s optical soliton data transmission is demonstrated over 70 km. Highly efficient distributed Raman amplifiers for fiber-loss compensation are realized by using high Delta n dispersion-shifted single-mode fibers pumped by laser diodes. To achieve high bit rate transmission, optical multiplexing and demultiplexing techniques are also employed. The bit error rate (BER) performance dependence on the input peak power of the optical pulse is measured. No power penalty can be seen at the input peak power required for transmitting optical solitons while the BER performance degrades when decreasing the input peak power.>