Multi-stage perturbation theory for compensating intra-channel nonlinear impairments in fiber-optic links

A recursive perturbation theory to model the fiber-optic system is developed. Using this perturbation theory, a multi-stage compensation technique to mitigate the intra-channel nonlinear impairments is investigated. The technique is validated by numerical simulations of a single-polarization single-channel fiber-optic system operating at 28 Gbaud, 32-quadrature amplitude modulation (32-QAM), and 40 x 80 km transmission distance. It is found that, with 2 samples per symbol, the multi-stage scheme with eight compensation stages increases the Q-factor as compared with linear compensation by 4.5 dB; as compared with single-stage compensation, the computational complexity is reduced by a factor of 1.3 and the required memory for storing perturbation coefficients is decreased by a factor of 13. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America