On nonlinearly-induced noise in single-channel optical links with digital backpropagation

In this paper, we investigate the performance limits of electronic chromatic dispersion compensation (EDC) and digital backpropagation (DBP) for a single-channel non-dispersion-managed fiber-optical link. A known analytical method to derive the performance of the system with EDC is extended to derive a first-order approximation for the performance of the system with DBP. In contrast to the cubic growth of the variance of the nonlinear noise-like interference, often called nonlinear noise, with input power for EDC, a quadratic growth is observed with DBP using this approximation. Finally, we provide numerical results to verify the accuracy of the proposed approach and compare it with existing analytical models. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America