Scalable nonlinear equalization in high-bit-rate optical
transmission systems
Rameez Asif,* Humayun Shahid, Farzana Arshad, and Rashid Saleem
Telecommunication Engineering Department (TED), University of Engineering and Technology (UET),
Taxila 47050, Pakistan
*Corresponding author: rameez.asif@uettaxila.edu.pk
Received January 22, 2013; revised March 6, 2013; accepted March 14, 2013;
posted August 29, 2013 (Doc. ID 183902); published September 30, 2013
In this paper, we report on the performance comparison of all-optical signal processing methodologies to com-
pensate fiber transmission impairments, namely chromatic dispersion and nonlinear distortion caused by the Kerr
effect, in a coherent 112 Gbit∕s dual-polarization 64 bit quadrature amplitude modulation system over 800 km
standard single-mode fiber. We numerically compare optical backward propagation (OBP) with optical phase con-
jugation (OPC) techniques, namely. mid-link spectral inversion, predispersed spectral inversion, and OPC with
nonlinearity module. We also evaluate a self-phase-modulation-based optical limiter with an appropriate pre-
chirping to compensate for the intensity fluctuations as a hybrid approach with OBP. The results depict improve-
ment in system performance by a factor of ∼4 dB of signal input power by all-optical signal processing methods,
which is comparative with ideal digital backward propagation where the high complexity is the intrinsic impedi-
ment in the real-time implementation of the technique with coherent receivers. © 2013 Chinese Laser Press
OCIS codes: (060.2330) Fiber optics communications; (060.2310) Fiber optics; (060.1660) Coherent
communications; (060.4250) Networks.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/PRJ.1.000130
1. INTRODUCTION
Digital compensation of linear and nonlinear signal distortions
with a backward propagation algorithm (DBP) is a topic of high
interest in recent months to improve the nonlinear tolerance of
the optical communication systems. With higher baud rates
and advanced modulation formats, channel capacity [1,2] is
limited by the signal degradation due to fiber nonlinearity as
it increases with signal input power. The DBP algorithm allows
joint compensation of chromatic dispersion (CD) and nonli-
nearities (NL) [3–6] along with the coherent receiver. It can
be implemented by inversely solving the nonlinear Schrödinger
equation (NLSE) using a split-step Fourier method (SSFM). It is
demonstrated that DBP in a single-channel transmission can be
improved by using a modified split-step Fourier method (also
termed as modified DBP) [7,8]. M-DBP is based on the optimi-
zation of the nonlinear calculation point. In order to reduce the
complexity of the algorithm, the correlated DBP (CBP) algo-
rithm is introduced in [9,10]. The performance of the DBP
algorithm is evaluated for diverse baud rates, namely 14, 28,
and 56 Gbaud with quadrature phase shift keying modulation
formats [11–14]. Especially with the introduction of the loga-
rithmic step-size-based DBP algorithm [12–14], which shows
efficient system performance as compared to M-DBP, the non-
linear threshold point (NLT) of higher baud rate transmissions
is significantly improved. Due to exponentially growing global
bandwidth demand, polarization-division-multiplexed (PDM)
16-state quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) with high
spectral efficiency (SE) is becoming a promising candidate to
achieve per-channel bit rates beyond 100 Gbit∕s and has been
the subject of extensive research [15–19]. The multichannel
transmission performance over 670 km single-mode fiber
(SMF) and 656 km large effective area pure-silica-core fiber
is reported in [16,17]. The evaluation of the DBP algorithm
in a 224 Gb∕s PDM 16-QAM system over 250 km of SMF
with uncompensated link is reported in [19], with 3.5 dB of
Q-improvement in the performance.
However, this high SE is obtained at the expense of com-
plicated transmitter and receiver structures, higher optical
signal-to-noise ratio requirements, and dense constellation di-
agrams, which collectively make them less robust against fi-
ber transmission impairments, namely CD and NL. But also
the complexity of DBP algorithm is so high due to ultrawide
bandwidth requirements that it becomes an intrinsic impedi-
ment in the real-time implementation of the DBP algorithm.
To overcome the computational complexities of DBP in
higher order modulation formats such as 32-QAM and more,
an alternative approach of optical backward propagation
(OBP) is proposed [20]. The OBP module consists of
dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) and a NL compensator
(NLC). In the NLC module of the OBP, an effective negative
Kerr nonlinear coefficient using two highly nonlinear fibers
(HNLFs) is realized. It is a well-known fact that in the all-
optical signal processing techniques intensity fluctuation is
a critical issue [21]. Till date, numerous techniques for optical
intensity stabilization including optical limiters, optical re-
shaping techniques, and optical regenerators have been evalu-
ated [22,23]. Recently, the methods based on optical phase
conjugation (OPC) with NL module (OPC-NM) [24] and pre-
dispersed spectral inversion (PD-SI) [25] have been investi-
gated in order to attain comparative system performance
with respect to ideal DBP.
In this paper, we have extended our previously reported
work [26] and numerically implemented various all-optical
signal processing methods for the joint compensation of
130 Photon. Res. / Vol. 1, No. 3 / October 2013 Asif et al.
2327-9125/13/030130-06 © 2013 Chinese Laser Press