Improved fiber nonlinearity mitigation in dispersion managed optical OFDM links

Fiber nonlinearity is seen as a capacity limiting factor in OFDM based dispersion managed links since the Four Wave Mixing effects become enhanced due to the high PAPR. In this paper, the authors have compared the linear and nonlinear PAPR reduction techniques for fiber nonlinearity mitigation in OFDM based dispersion managed links. In the existing optical systems, linear transform techniques such as SLM and PTS have been implemented to reduce nonlinear effects. In the proposed study, superior performance of the L2-by-3 nonlinear transform technique is demonstrated for PAPR reduction to mitigate fiber nonlinearities. The performance evaluation is carried out by interfacing multiple simulators. The results of both linear and nonlinear transform techniques have been compared and the results show that nonlinear transform technique outperforms the linear transform in terms of nonlinearity mitigation and improved BER performance.