Daniel Semrau

Achievable information rates estimates in optically amplified transmission systems using nonlinearity compensation and probabilistic shaping

Achievable information rates (AIRs) of wideband optical communication systems using a ∼40  nm (∼5  THz) erbium-doped fiber amplifier and ∼100  nm (∼12.5  THz) distributed Raman amplification are estimated based on a first-order perturbation analysis. The AIRs of each individual channel have been evaluated for DP-64QAM, DP-256QAM, and DP-1024QAM modulation formats. The impact of full-field nonlinear compensation (FF-NLC) and probabilistically shaped constellations using a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution were studied and compared to electronic dispersion compensation. It has been found that a probabilistically shaped DP-1024QAM constellation, combined with FF-NLC, yields achievable information rates of ∼75  Tbit/s for the EDFA scheme and ∼223  Tbit/s for the Raman amplification scheme over a 2000 km standard single-mode fiber transmission.

Modulation format dependence of digital nonlinearity compensation performance in optical fibre communication systems

The relationship between modulation format and the performance of multi-channel digital back-propagation (MC-DBP) in ideal Nyquist-spaced optical communication systems is investigated. It is found that the nonlinear distortions behave independent of modulation format in the case of full-field DBP, in contrast to the cases of electronic dispersion compensation and partial-bandwidth DBP. It is shown that the minimum number of steps per span required for MC-DBP depends on the chosen modulation format. For any given target information rate, there exists a possible trade-off between modulation format and back-propagated bandwidth, which could be used to reduce the computational complexity requirement of MC-DBP.

On the limits of digital back-propagation in the presence of transceiver noise

This paper investigates the impact of transceiver noise on the performance of digital back-propagation (DBP). A generalized expression to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) obtained using DBP in the presence of transceiver noise is described. This new expression correctly accounts for the nonlinear beating between the transceiver noise and the signal in the optical fiber transmission link. The transceiver noise-signal nonlinear beating has been identified as the main reason for the discrepancy between predicted and practical performance of DBP; which has not been previously suggested. This nonlinear beating has been included in the GN model, allowing DBP gains in practical systems to be predicted analytically. Experiments and split-step simulations with and without polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) in the transmission link have been performed. The results show that the impact of transceiver noise greatly outweighs that of PMD, and the analytical expressions are confirmed by the numerical simulations.

On the bandwidth dependent performance of split transmitter-receiver optical fiber nonlinearity compensation

The Gaussian noise model is used to estimate the performance of three digital nonlinearity compensation (NLC) algorithms in C-band, long-haul, optical fiber transmission, when the span length and NLC bandwidth are independently varied. The algorithms are receiver-side digital backpropagation (DBP), transmitter-side DBP (digital precompensation), and Split NLC (an equal division of DBP between transmitter and receiver). For transmission over 100×100 km spans, the model predicts a 0.2 dB increase in SNR when applying Split NLC (versus DBP) to a single 32 GBd channel (from 0.4 dB to 0.6 dB), monotonically increasing with NLC bandwidth up to 1.6 dB for full-field NLC. The underlying assumptions of this model and the practical considerations for implementation of Split NLC are discussed. This work demonstrates, theoretically, that, regardless of the transmission scenario, it is always beneficial to divide NLC between transmitter and receiver, and identifies the transmission regimes where Split NLC is particularly advantageous.

Digital back-propagation for nonlinearity mitigation in distributed Raman amplified links

The performance of digital back-propagation (DBP) for distributed Raman amplified optical communication systems is evaluated through analytical models and numerical simulations, and is compared with conventional lumped amplifier solutions, such as EDFA. The complexity of the DBP algorithm including the characteristic signal power profile of distributed Raman amplifiers is assessed. The use of full-field DBP in distributed Raman amplified systems leads to 1.3 dB additional gain with respect to systems employing lumped amplification, at the cost of only a 25% increase in complexity.

Investigation of bandwidth loading in optical fibre transmission using amplified spontaneous emission noise

The use of spectrally shaped amplified spontaneous emission noise (SS-ASE) as a method for emulating interfering channels in optical fibre transmission systems has been studied. It is shown that the use of SS-ASE leads to a slightly pessimistic performance relative to the use of conventionally modulated interfering channels in the nonlinear regime. The additional nonlinear interference noise (on the channel under test), due to the Gaussian nature of SS-ASE, has been calculated using a combination of the Gaussian noise (GN) and enhanced GN (EGN) models for the entire C-band (4.5 THz) and experimentally shown to provide a lower bound for transmission performance.

Achievable rate degradation of ultra-wideband coherent fiber communication systems due to stimulated Raman scattering

As the bandwidths of optical communication systems are increased to maximize channel capacity, the impact of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) on the achievable information rates (AIR) in ultra-wideband coherent WDM systems becomes significant, and is investigated in this work, for the first time. By modifying the GN-model to account for SRS, it is possible to derive a closed-form expression that predicts the optical signal-to-noise ratio of all channels at the receiver for bandwidths of up to 15 THz, which is in excellent agreement with numerical calculations. It is shown that, with fixed modulation and coding rate, SRS leads to a drop of approximately 40% in achievable information rates for bandwidths higher than 15 THz. However, if adaptive modulation and coding rates are applied across the entire spectrum, this AIR reduction can be limited to only 10%.