Patent ID: 7978945

Claim:
An optical communications link, comprising: a contiguous series arrangement of N−1 fiber spans, 2≦N−1<10, each fiber span i=1, . . . , N−1 comprising a primary fiber line “i” characterized by an i th parameter set [α i (z), β 2,i (z), (γ g P) i (z)] in which α i (z) is a loss/gain coefficient profile, β 2,i (z) is a second-order dispersion coefficient profile, and (γ g P) i (z) is a first nonlinear coefficient-power profile; and an N th fiber span comprising a primary fiber line “N” characterized by an N th parameter set [α N (z), β 2,N (z), (γ g P) N (z)]; wherein along each primary fiber line “i” there is a relationship R i [α i (R i z), −β 2,i (R i z), (γ g P) i (R i z)]≈[α N (z), β 2,N (z), (γ g P) N (z)] with R i being a real scalar constant, for facilitating compensation of at least one nonlinear effect in an optical signal propagating through said N fiber spans.