Compensation of Dispersion and Nonlinear Impairments Using Digital Backpropagation

Optical fiber transmission is impacted by linear and nonlinear impairments. We study the use of digital backpropagation (BP) in conjunction with coherent detection to jointly mitigate dispersion and fiber nonlinearity. We propose a noniterative asymmetric split-step Fourier method (SSFM) for solving the inverse nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE). Using simulation results for RZ-QPSK transmitted over terrestrial systems with inline amplification and dispersion compensation, we obtain heuristics for the step size and sampling rate requirements, as well as the optimal dispersion map.