We demonstrate that a combination of Raman laser based amplification and optical phase conjugation enables transmission beyond the nonlinear-Shannon limit. We show nonlinear compensation of 7x114Gbit/s DP-QPSK channels, increasing system reach by 30%.

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate the benefit of polarization insensitive dual-band optical phase conjugation for up to ten 400Gbit/s optical super-channels using a Raman amplified transmission link with a realistic span length of 75km. We demonstrate that the resultant increase in transmission distance may be predicted analytically if the detrimental impacts of power asymmetry and polarization mode dispersion are taken into account.

A fast Newton-based support vector machine (N-SVM) nonlinear equalizer (NLE) is experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, in 40 Gb/s 16-quadrature amplitude modulated coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing at 2000 km of transmission. It is shown that N-SVM-NLE extends the optimum launched optical power by 2 dB compared to the benchmark Volterra-based NLE. The performance improvement by N-SVM is due to its ability of tackling both deterministic fiber-induced nonlinear effects and the interaction between nonlinearities and stochastic noises (e.g., polarization-mode dispersion). An N-SVM is more tolerant to intersubcarrier nonlinear crosstalk effects than Volterra-based NLE, especially when applied across all subcarriers simultaneously. In contrast to the conventional SVM, the proposed algorithm is of reduced classifier complexity offering lower computational load and execution time. For a low C-parameter of 4 (a penalty parameter related to complexity), an execution time of 1.6 s is required for N-SVM to effectively mitigate nonlinearities. Compared to conventional SVM, the computational load of N-SVM is ∼6 times lower.

A black-box polarization insensitive fiber optical parametric amplifier (PI-FOPA) is characterized for the first time using a commercial 127 Gb/s polarization-division multiplexed PDM-QPSK transponder within a multiplex of twenty-two equivalent DWDM signals across a 2.3 THz bandwidth portion of the C-band. The PI-FOPA employs a recently demonstrated diversity loop arrangement comprising two lengths of highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) with the parametric pump being removed after the first HNLF in both directions about the loop. This arrangement is named the Half-Pass Loop FOPA or HPL-FOPA. In total, a record equivalent 2.3 Tb/s of data is amplified within the HPL-FOPA for three different pump power regimes producing net-gains of 10 dB, 15 dB and 20 dB (averaged over all signals). For the latter two regimes, the gain bandwidth is observed to extend considerably beyond the C-band, illustrating the potential for this design to amplify signals over bandwidths commensurate with the EDFA and beyond. Under the 15 dB gain condition, the average OSNR penalty to achieve 10^-3 bit error rate for all twenty three signals was found to be 0.5 ± 0.3 dB. Worst case penalty was 0.8 ± 0.3 dB, verifying the use of the architecture for polarization insensitive operation. The growth of four-wave mixing signal-signal crosstalk is additionally characterized and found to be gain independent for a fixed output power per signal. A simple effective length model is developed which predicts this behavior and suggests a new configuration for significantly reduced crosstalk.

We experimentally demonstrate a Raman-Assisted Fibre Optical Parametric Amplifier (RA-FOPA) with 20dB net gain using wavelength division multiplexed signals. We report amplification of 10x58Gb/s 100GHz-spaced QPSK signals and show that by appropriate tuning of the parametric pump power and frequency, gain improvement of up to 5dB can be achieved for the RA-FOPA compared with combined individual contributions from the parametric and Raman pumps. We compare the RA-FOPA with an equivalent-gain conventional FOPA and find that four-wave mixing crosstalk is substantially reduced by up to 5.8 ± 0.4dB using the RA-FOPA. Worst-case performance penalty of the RA-FOPA is found to be only 1.0 ± 0.2dB over all measured OSNRs, frequencies and input powers, making it an attractive proposal for future communications systems.

We experimentally optimize a single pump fiber optical parametric amplifier in terms of gain spectral bandwidth and gain variation (GV). We find that optimal performance is achieved with the pump tuned to the zero-dispersion wavelength of dispersion stable highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF). We demonstrate further improvement of parametric gain bandwidth and GV by decreasing the HNLF length. We discover that Raman and parametric gain spectra produced by the same pump may be merged together to enhance overall gain bandwidth, while keeping GV low. Consequently, we report an ultra-flat gain of 9.6 ± 0.5 dB over a range of 111 nm (12.8 THz) on one side of the pump. Additionally, we demonstrate amplification of a 60 Gbit/s QPSK signal tuned over a portion of the available bandwidth with OSNR penalty less than 1 dB for Q² below 14 dB.

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We demonstrate and characterize polarization-division multiplexed (PDM) DWDM data transmission for the first time in a range of systems incorporating a net-gain polarization-insensitive fiber optical parametric amplifier (PI-FOPA) for loss compensation. The PI-FOPA comprises a modified diversity-loop architecture to achieve 15dB net-gain, and up to 2.3THz (~18nm) bandwidth. Three representative systems are characterized using a 100Gb/s PDM-QPSK signal in conjunction with emulated DWDM neighbouring channels: (a) a 4x75km in-line fiber transmission system incorporating multiple EDFAs and a single PI-FOPA (b) N cascaded PI-FOPA amplification stages in an unlevelled Nx25km recirculating loop arrangement, with no EDFAs used within the loop signal path, and (c) M cascaded PI-FOPA amplification stages as part of an Mx75.6km gain-flattened recirculating loop system with the FOPA compensating for the transmission fiber loss, and EDFA compensation for loop switching and levelling loss. For the 4x75km in-line system (a), we transmit 45x50GHz-spaced signals ('equivalent' data-rate of 4.5Tb/s) with average OSNR penalty of 1.3dB over the band at 10 BER. For the unlevelled 'FOPA-only' 25.2km cascaded system (b), we report a maximum of eight recirculations for all 10x100GHz-spaced signals, and five recirculations for 20x50GHz-spaced signals. For the 75.6km levelled system