On Time-Bandwidth Product of Multi-Soliton Pulses

TL;DR

This paper investigates the evolution and optimization of the time-bandwidth product of multi-soliton pulses in fiber optics, aiming to improve spectral efficiency in nonlinear Fourier domain communication.

Contribution

It provides numerical optimization and analytical estimations of multi-soliton pulse shapes to minimize their time-bandwidth product, advancing understanding of their spectral properties.

Findings

Optimized second and third order soliton pulses for minimal time-bandwidth product.

Analytical estimates of pulse duration and bandwidth for multi-solitons.

Approximate calculations for higher order solitons' time-bandwidth product.

Abstract

Multi-soliton pulses are potential candidates for fiber optical transmission where the information is modulated and recovered in the so-called nonlinear Fourier domain. While this is an elegant technique to account for the channel nonlinearity, the obtained spectral efficiency, so far, is not competitive with the classic Nyquist-based schemes. In this paper, we study the evolution of the time-bandwidth product of multi-solitons as they propagate along the optical fiber. For second and third order soliton pulses, we numerically optimize the pulse shapes to achieve the smallest time-bandwidth product when the phase of the spectral amplitudes is used for modulation. Moreover, we analytically estimate the pulse-duration and bandwidth of multi-solitons in some practically important cases. Those estimations enable us to approximate the time-bandwidth product for higher order solitons.