“…Only lately, machine learning algorithms have been in the spotlight of the optical communications community 40 . They are being considered for optical network monitoring and optimization 41,42,43 , optical header recognition 44 and mitigation of transmission effects 45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54 . Still, the drawback of applying these standard tools in ultrafast systems is that they are computationally expensive and still far away from reaching real-time processing at telecom data rates.In the present work, we provide a first validation that neuro-inspired information processing based on photonic implementations can address critical issues in the field of signal processing for high-speed communications.Specifically, we demonstrate that techniques like ELM and RC can offer solutions to data recovery of distorted signals from extended fibre transmission.…”