On nonlinear distortions of coherent systems
16 January 2012
We investigate via experiments and simulations the statistical properties and the accumulation of nonlinear transmission impairments in coherent systems without optical dispersion compensation. We experimentally show that signal distortions due to Kerr nonlinearity can be modeled as additive Gaussian noise, and we demonstrate that its variance has a supra-linear dependence on propagation distance both for low dispersion and standard single mode fiber. We propose a simple empirical model to account for linear and nonlinear noise accumulation, and to predict system performance for any distance, signal power and optical noise level. 2011 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (060.1660) Coherent communications; (060.4370) Nonlinear optics, fibers.
