Information rates in Kerr nonlinearity limited optical fiber communication systems.

Achievable information rates of optical communication systems are inherently limited by nonlinear distortions due to the Kerr effect occurred in optical fibres. These nonlinear impairments become more significant for communication systems with larger transmission bandwidths, closer channel spacing and higher-order modulation formats. In this paper, the efficacy of nonlinearity compensation techniques, including both digital back-propagation and optical phase conjugation, for enhancing achievable information rates in lumped EDFA- and distributed Raman-amplified fully-loaded C -band systems is investigated considering practical transceiver limitations. The performance of multiple modulation formats, such as dual-polarisation quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK), dual-polarisation 16 -ary quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-16QAM), DP-64QAM and DP-256QAM, has been studied in C -band systems with different transmission distances. It is found that the capabilities of both nonlinearity compensation techniques for enhancing achievable information rates strongly depend on signal modulation formats as well as target transmission distances.