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A method allowing the evaluation of the jitter degradation induced by a filter frequency dispersion (FFD) on a soliton transmission system is presented. The method is valid up to standard deviation of the order of the soliton linewidth. It is shown that systems with sliding-frequency filtering are more robust to FFD than systems with fixed-frequency filtering. In the first ones, standard deviations of the order of the quarter of the soliton linewidth can be tolerated without significant jitter degradation. Experimental data confirm this result.

Since the discovery of soliton control techniques, the highest bit rates transmitted over transoceanic distances have been obtained using soliton transmission systems. As linear and nonlinear effects are mixed, the physical understanding of nonlinear interaction of noise with the soliton or of filters or modulator effects on a soliton may be somewhat difficult. A perturbation theory in which the soliton is considered as a particle characterized by four parameters is presented. For most perturbations, meaningful mechanical equivalents can be found. This theory is applied to the most important perturbations of the soliton and it is shown that it not only provides many tools to make a qualitative study of the soliton propagation, but also yields quantitative results. Control techniques enable noise, jitter, and soliton interaction to be reduced. The efficiency of each technique is discussed. These techniques change the relative impact of the different constraints on system performance.