Patent ID: 8351798

Claim:
A method for setting up an optical system that includes at least in one direction a transmit terminal, a receive terminal, and a dispersion-managed optical fiber link coupled therebetween to allow a transmit optical signal to be transmitted by the transmit terminal, through the dispersion-managed optical fiber link, and to the receive terminal, the method comprising: an act of formulating the dispersion-managed optical fiber link in which the map trend slope of the accumulated chromatic dispersion is non-horizontal and such that the map trend slope intersects zero dispersion at a central region of an intended transmission distance between the transmit terminal and the receive terminal, wherein the non-horizontal map trend slope is achieved by having a positive dispersion introduced by one or more positive dispersion optical fiber segments of the dispersion-managed optical fiber link be out of balance with a negative dispersion introduced by one or more negative dispersion optical fiber segments of the dispersion-managed optical fiber link; an act of adjusting a tunable pre-compensation mechanism at the transmit terminal so as to reduce bit error rate; and during the act of adjusting the tunable pre-compensation mechanism at the transmit terminal, an act of adjusting a tunable post-compensation mechanism at the receive terminal so as to reduce accumulated dispersion of optical signals received at the receive terminal, wherein the act of adjusting the tunable pre-compensation mechanism is performed using a closed control loop that measures bit error rate at the receive terminal, and further adjusts the tunable pre-compensation mechanism and the post-compensation mechanism until an acceptable bit error rate is achieved.