The possibility of the flexible configuration of dispersion-managed optical links combined with optical phase conjugation by adopting an artificial distribution of the lengths of single mode fiber (SMF) and residual dispersion per span (RDPS) of the fiber spans has been numerically investigated. We confirmed that 'DA-DA' patterni.e., the lengths of SMF and RDPS around the front and the rear of OPC are smaller, but the lengths of SMF and RDPS closer to the transmitter and the receiver are largeris the best artificial pattern among the considered 16 artificial distribution patterns. Furthermore, the system performance in the optical link configured with this pattern is more improved than with the conventional uniform distribution of the SMF lengths and RDPS.

The weakness of the dispersion-managed link, which is combined with optical phase conjugation to compensate for optical signal distortion caused by chromatic dispersion and the nonlinear Kerr effect of the standard single mode fiber is, its limited structural flexibility. We propose a dispersion map that can simultaneously compensate for the distorted wavelength division multiplexed signal while increasing the configurational flexibility. Each residual dispersion per span (RDPS) in the former half of the proposed link is randomly determined, and in the latter half, the arrangement order of RDPS is the same as or inverted in the former half. We confirm that the dispersion maps in which the RDPS distribution pattern in the latter half is opposite to the arrangement order in the former half are more effective in compensation, and the compensation effect is better than in the dispersion map of the conventional scheme. The notable result of this study is that the flexibility can be increased by randomly arranging RDPS in the former half, and compensation improvement can be achieved by inversing the order of RDPS arrangement of the former half in the latter half, which makes the dispersion profile of each half link roughly symmetric with respect to the midway optical phase conjugator.

A dispersion map was proposed to improve the compensation effect of a distorted WDM (wavelength division multiplexed) channel in a dispersion-managed link coupled with optical phase conjugation. The dispersion map is an origin-symmetric structure around the optical phase conjugator in the middle of the transmission path. In addition, the dispersion map has a form in which a constant dispersion accumulation pattern is repeated regularly. Through simulation, we confirmed that the application of the origin-symmetric dispersion map with a repetitively shaped configuration was more effective in compensating for the distorted WDM channel than in the dispersion-managed link with a conventional dispersion map. In addition, we confirmed that the compensation effect could be increased when the cumulative dispersion distribution of the origin-symmetric distribution map had a positive value in the first half section and a negative value in the second half section. Further, we observed that as the number of repeated dispersion accumulation patterns increased, the residual dispersion per span should also be increased.