Digital Nonlinearity Compensation in High-Capacity Optical Fibre Communication Systems: Performance and Optimisation

TL;DR

This paper explores how digital nonlinearity compensation can be optimized to improve data rates in high-capacity optical fiber systems, addressing Kerr effects as a key challenge.

Contribution

It introduces an optimization framework balancing modulation format and bandwidth to enhance performance while managing computational complexity.

Findings

Optimal trade-off identified between modulation format and bandwidth.

Digital nonlinearity compensation significantly improves achievable data rates.

Computational complexity can be reduced without sacrificing performance.

Abstract

Meeting the ever-growing information rate demands has become of utmost importance for optical communication systems. However, it has proven to be a challenging task due to the presence of Kerr effects, which have largely been regarded as a major bottleneck for enhancing the achievable information rates in modern optical communications. In this work, the optimisation and performance of digital nonlinearity compensation are discussed for maximising the achievable information rates in spectrally-efficient optical fibre communication systems. It is found that, for any given target information rate, there exists a trade-off between modulation format and compensated bandwidth to reduce the computational complexity requirement of digital nonlinearity compensation.