Nonlinear Compensation Using Backpropagation for Polarization-Multiplexed Transmission

Digital backpropagation (BP) is a universal method for jointly compensating dispersion and nonlinear impairments in optical fiber and is applicable to signals of any modulation format. In this paper, we compare single carrier (SC) versus orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) for polarization-multiplexed transmission. We show that at realistic data rates and transmission distances, polarization mode dispersion does not significantly degrade the performance of BP and can be mitigated by a post-BP linear equalizer. Dispersion unmanaged transmission can significantly reduce nonlinearity, and in this transmission regime, SC and OFDM have similar nonlinear tolerance. Multichannel BP is effective at mitigating interchannel nonlinearity for point-to-point links.