The performance of direct-detection transceivers employing electronic dispersion compensation combined with DSP-based receiver linearization techniques is assessed through experiments on a 4 × 112 Gb/s wavelength-division multiplexing direct-detection single-sideband 16 quadratic-amplitude modulation Nyquist-subcarrier-modulation system operating at a net optical information spectral density of 2.8 b/s/Hz in transmission over standard single mode fiber links of up to 240 km. The experimental results indicate that systems with receiver-based dispersion compensation can achieve similar performance to those utilizing transmitter-based dispersion compensation, provided it is implemented together with an effective digital receiver linearization technique. The use of receiver-based compensation would simplify the operation of a fiber link since knowledge of the link dispersion is not required at the transmitter. The recently proposed Kramers-Kronig receiver scheme was found to be the best performing among the receiver linearization techniques assessed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental demonstration of the Kramers-Kronig scheme.

The maximum data throughput in a single mode optical fibre is a function of both the signal bandwidth and the wavelength-dependent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this paper, we investigate the use of hybrid discrete Raman & rare-earth doped fibre amplifiers to enable wide-band signal gain, without spectral gaps between amplification bands. We describe the widest continuous coherent transmission bandwidth experimentally demonstrated to date of 16.83 THz, achieved by simultaneously using the S-, C-and L-bands. The variation of fibre parameters over this bandwidth, together with the hybrid amplification method result in a significant SNR wavelengthdependence. To cope with this, the signal was optimised for each SNR, wavelength and transmission band. By using a system-tailored set of geometrically shaped constellations, we demonstrate the transmission of 660⇥25 GBd channels over 40 km, resulting in a record single mode fibre net throughput of 178.08 Tbit/s. Index Terms-Broadband transmission system, high order modulation format, geometric shaping.

The achievable transmission capacity of conventional optical fibre communication systems is limited by nonlinear distortions due to the Kerr effect and the difficulty in modulating the optical field to effectively use the available fibre bandwidth. In order to achieve a high information spectral density (ISD), while simultaneously maintaining transmission reach, multi-channel fibre nonlinearity compensation and spectrally efficient data encoding must be utilised. In this work, we use a single coherent super-receiver to simultaneously receive a DP-16QAM super-channel, consisting of seven spectrally shaped 10GBd sub-carriers spaced at the Nyquist frequency. Effective nonlinearity mitigation is achieved using multi-channel digital back-propagation (MC-DBP) and this technique is combined with an optimised forward error correction implementation to demonstrate a record gain in transmission reach of 85%; increasing the maximum transmission distance from 3190 km to 5890 km, with an ISD of 6.60 b/s/Hz. In addition, this report outlines for the first time, the sensitivity of MC-DBP gain to linear transmission line impairments and defines a trade-off between performance and complexity.

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.

We investigate the effect of varying the DSP resampling rate and the carrier-to-signal power ratio on the performance of direct-detection Kramers-Kronig receivers, through experiments on 4×112 Gb/s SSB Nyquist-SCM transmission over 240 km.