Abstract
The bit error rate (BER) performance of an optical soliton communication system is analyzed. Based on the jitter variance equation and the chi-square distribution for the amplified spontaneous emission noise, an analytic expression for the BER calculation is obtained. We have investigated the effects of Gordon-Haus jitter, which is due to the random phase shift of the soliton individual central wavelength induced by the amplified spontaneous emission noise of the amplifiers. Very good agreement has been obtained between our theory and the reported experimental results.