  We investigate propagation of J soliton sequences in a nonlinear optical
waveguide array with generic weak Ginzburg-Landau (GL) gain-loss and
nearest-neighbor (NN) interaction. The propagation is described by a system of
J perturbed coupled nonlinear Schr\"odinger (NLS) equations. The NN interaction
property leads to the elimination of collisional three-pulse interaction
effects, which prevented the observation of stable multisequence soliton
propagation with J>2 sequences in the presence of generic GL gain-loss in all
previous studies. We show that the dynamics of soliton amplitudes can be
described by a generalized J-dimensional Lotka-Volterra (LV) model. Stability
and bifurcation analysis for the equilibrium points of the LV model, which is
augmented by an application of the Lyapunov function method, is used to develop
setups that lead to robust and scalable transmission stabilization and
switching for a general J value. The predictions of the LV model are confirmed
by extensive numerical simulations with the perturbed coupled-NLS model with
J=3, 4, and 5 soliton sequences. Furthermore, soliton stability and the
agreement between the LV model's predictions and the simulations are
independent of J. Therefore, our study provides the first demonstration of
robust control of multiple colliding sequences of NLS solitons in the presence
of generic weak GL gain-loss with an arbitrary number of sequences. Due to the
robustness and scalability of the results, they can have important applications
in stabilization and switching of broadband soliton-based optical waveguide
transmission.
