Ideal optical backpropagation of scalar NLSE using dispersion-decreasing fibers for WDM transmission

An ideal optical backpropagation (OBP) scheme to compensate for dispersion and nonlinear effects of the transmission fibers is proposed. The scheme consists of an optical phase conjugator (OPC), N spans of dispersion-decreasing fibers (DDFs) and amplifiers, placed at the end of the fiber optic link. In order to compensate for the nonlinear effects of the transmission fibers exactly, the nonlinear coefficient of the backpropagation fiber has to increase exponentially with distance or equivalently the power in the backpropagation fiber should increase exponentially with distance if the nonlinear coefficient is constant. In this paper, it is shown that a combination of DDFs and amplifiers can compensate for the nonlinear effects exactly. An analytical expression for the dispersion profile of the DDF is derived. Numerical simulation of a long haul wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) fiber optic system with the proposed OBP scheme shows that the system reach can be enhanced by 54% as compared to digital backpropagation (DBP). (C) 2013 Optical Society of America