High-order statistical equalizer for nonlinearity compensation in dispersion-managed coherent optical communications.

Fiber nonlinearity has become a major limiting factor to realize ultra-high-speed optical communications. We propose a fractionally-spaced equalizer which exploits a trained high-order statistics to deal with data-pattern dependent nonlinear impairments in fiber-optic communications. The computer simulation reveals that the proposed 3-tap equalizer improves Q-factor by more than 2 dB for long-haul transmissions of 5,230 km distance and 40 Gbps data rate.