New services and applications are causing an exponential increase in Internet traffic. In a few years, the current fiber optic communication system infrastructure will not be able to meet this demand because fiber nonlinearity dramatically limits the information transmission rate. Eigenvalue communication could potentially overcome these limitations. It relies on a mathematical technique called “nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT)” to exploit the “hidden” linearity of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation as the master model for signal propagation in an optical fiber. We present here the theoretical tools describing the NFT for the Manakov system and report on experimental transmission results for dual polarization in fiber optic eigenvalue communications. A transmission of up to 373.5 km with a bit error rate less than the hard-decision forward error correction threshold has been achieved. Our results demonstrate that dual-polarization NFT can work in practice and enable an increased spectral efficiency in NFT-based communication systems, which are currently based on single polarization channels.

In this paper, probabilistic shaping is numerically and experimentally investigated for increasing the transmission reach of wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical communication systems employing quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). An optimized probability mass function (PMF) of the QAM symbols is first found from a modified Blahut–Arimoto algorithm for the optical channel. A turbo coded bit interleaved coded modulation system is then applied, which relies on many-to-one labeling to achieve the desired PMF, thereby achieving shaping gains. Pilot symbols at rate at most 2% are used for synchronization and equalization, making it possible to receive input constellations as large as 1024QAM. The system is evaluated experimentally on a 10 GBd, 5 channels WDM setup. The maximum system reach is increased w.r.t. standard 1024QAM by 20% at input data rate of 4.65 bits/symbol and up to 75% at 5.46 bits/symbol. It is shown that rate adaptation does not require changing of the modulation format. The performance of the proposed 1024QAM shaped system is validated on all 5 channels of the WDM signal for selected distances and rates. Finally, it is shown via EXIT charts and BER analysis that iterative demapping, while generally beneficial to the system, is not a requirement for achieving the shaping gain.

In this paper, an alternative approach to design linear equalization algorithms for optical coherent receivers is introduced. Using widely linear (WL) complex analysis, a general analytical model it is shown, where In-phase/quadrature (IQ) imbalances and IQ skew at the coherent receiver front-end are naturally included in channel equalization problem. Next, the problem of chromatic dispersion (CD) compensation after imbalanced and skewed coherent detection is analyzed. Based on the analytical models obtained it is demonstrated that, under the presence of such receiver front-end imperfections, the complexity of the channel equalization filter which is able to provide optimal performance, on the minimum mean square error sense, will scale proportionally to twice the complexity of CD compensation, if standard zero-forcing equalization of CD is applied as first equalization procedure. For the last, it is shown that, by applying the WL complex analysis, one can derive a complex-valued adaptive equalizer structure which is able to compensate for linear IQ-mixing effects at the receiver front-end. By extensive numerical simulations, the performance versus complexity of the proposed equalizer is shown to match the predictions of the analytical models derived.

Nonlinear distortion experienced by signals during their propagation through optical fibers strongly limits the throughput of optical communication systems. Recently, a strong research focus has been dedicated to nonlinearity mitigation and compensation techniques. At the same time, a more disruptive approach, the nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT), aims at designing signaling schemes more suited to the nonlinear fiber channel. In a short period, impressive results have been reported by modulating either the continuous spectrum or the discrete spectrum. Additionally, very recent works further introduced the opportunity to modulate both spectra for single polarization transmission. Here, we extend the joint modulation scheme to dual-polarization transmission by introducing the framework to construct a dual-polarization optical signal with the desired continuous and discrete spectra. After a brief analysis of the numerical algorithms used to implement the proposed scheme, the first experimental demonstration of dual-polarization joint nonlinear frequency division multiplexing (NFDM) modulation is reported for up to 3200 km of low-loss transmission fiber. The proposed dual-polarization joint modulation schemes enables to exploit all the degrees of freedom for modulation (both polarizations and both spectra) provided by a single-mode fiber (SMF).

In this paper, we demonstrate wavelength conversion of advanced modulation formats such as 10-GBd 64-QAM and 256-QAM with high conversion efficiency over a 29-nm spectral window by using four-wave mixing in an AlGaAs-on-insulator (AlGaAsOI) nanowaveguide. A thorough characterization of the wavelength converter is reported, including the optimization of the AlGaAsOI nanowaveguide in terms of conversion efficiency and associated bandwidth and the analysis of the impact of the converter pump quality and power as well as the signal input power. The optimized converter enables generating idlers with optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) above 30 dB over a 29-nm bandwidth leading to error-free conversion of 64-QAM and 256-QAM with OSNR penalty below 1.0 dB and 2.0 dB, respectively. The generated idlers exhibit an OSNR margin to the chosen forward error correction thresholds of $>$ 3 dB and $>$ 7 dB for 64-QAM and 256-QAM, respectively, that can be used for transmission after conversion.