The capacity of a discrete-time model of optical fiber described by the split-step Fourier method (SSFM) as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio $\text{SNR}$ and the number of segments in distance $K$ is considered. It is shown that if $K\geq \text{SNR}^{2/3}$ and $\text{SNR} \rightarrow \infty$, the capacity of the resulting continuous-space lossless model is lower bounded by $\frac{1}{2}\log_2(1+\text{SNR}) - \frac{1}{2}+ o(1)$, where $o(1)$ tends to zero with $\text{SNR}$. As $K\rightarrow \infty$, the inter-symbol interference (ISI) averages out to zero due to the law of large numbers and the SSFM model tends to a diagonal phase noise model. It follows that, in contrast to the discrete-space model where there is only one signal degree-of-freedom (DoF) at high powers, the number of DoFs in the continuous-space model is at least half of the input dimension $n$. Intensity-modulation and direct detection achieves this rate. The pre-log in the lower bound when $K= \sqrt[δ]{\text{SNR}}$ is generally characterized in terms of $δ$.
It is shown that if the nonlinearity parameter $γ\rightarrow \infty$, the capacity of the continuous-space model is $\frac{1}{2}\log_2(1+\text{SNR})+ o(1)$.
The SSFM model when the dispersion matrix does not depend on $K$ is considered. It is shown that the capacity of this model when $K= \sqrt[δ]{\text{SNR}}$, $δ>3$, and $\text{SNR} \rightarrow \infty$ is $\frac{1}{2n}\log_2(1+\text{SNR})+ O(1)$. Thus, there is only one DoF in this model.
Finally, it is found that the maximum achievable information rates (AIRs) of the SSFM model with back-propagation equalization obtained using numerical simulation follows a double-ascent curve.
An important problem in fiber-optic communications is to invert the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in real time to reverse the deterministic effects of the channel. Interestingly, the popular split-step Fourier method (SSFM) leads to a computation graph that is reminiscent of a deep neural network. This observation allows one to leverage tools from machine learning to reduce complexity. In particular, the main disadvantage of the SSFM is that its complexity using M steps is at least M times larger than a linear equalizer. This is because the linear SSFM operator is a dense matrix. In previous …
In this work, a new data-driven fiber channel modeling method, generative adversarial network (GAN) is investigated to learn the distribution of fiber channel transfer function. Our investigation focuses on joint channel effects of attenuation, chromic dispersion, self-phase modulation (SPM), and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise. To achieve the success of GAN for channel modeling, we modify the loss function, design the condition vector of input and address the mode collapse for the long-haul transmission. The effective architecture, parameters, and training skills of GAN are also di…
We study a nonlinear fiber optical channel impaired by cross-phase modulation and dispersion from the viewpoint of an interference channel. We characterize an outer bound on the capacity region of simultaneously achievable rate pairs, assuming a two-user perturbative channel model.
We consider the optical fiber channel modelled by the nonlinear Shrödinger equation with zero dispersion and additive Gaussian noise. Using Feynman path-integral approach for the model we find corrections to conditional probability density function, output signal distribution, conditional and output signal entropies, and the channel capacity at large signal-to-noise ratio. We demonstrate that the correction to the channel capacity is positive for large signal power. Therefore, this correction increases the earlier calculated capacity for a nondispersive nonlinear optical fiber channel in the i…
The per-sample zero-dispersion channel model of the optical fiber is considered. It is shown that capacity is uniquely achieved by an input probability distribution that has continuous uniform phase and discrete amplitude that takes on finitely many values. This result holds when the channel is subject to general input cost constraints, that include a peak amplitude constraint and a joint average and peak amplitude constraint.
We consider multi-input multi-output (MIMO) communications over multi-mode fibers (MMFs). Current MMF standards, such as OM3 and OM4, use fibers with core radii of 50 μm, allowing hundreds of modes to propagate. Unfortunately, due to physical and computational complexity limitations, we cannot couple and detect hundreds of data streams into and out of the fiber. In order to circumvent this issue, we present input-output coupling schemes that allow the user to couple and extract a reasonable number of signals from a fiber with many modes. This approach is particularly attractive as it is scalab…
An upper bound to the information capacity of a wavelength-division multi- plexed optical fiber communication system is derived in a model incorporating the nonlinear propagation effects of cross-phase modulation (XPM). This work is based on the paper by Mitra et al., finding lower bounds to the channel capacity, in which physical models for propagation are used to calculate statistical properties of the conditional probability distribution relating input and output in a single WDM channel. In this paper we present a tractable channel model incorporating the effects of cross phase modulation. …
Regular perturbation is applied to the Manakov equation and motivates a generalized correlated phase-and-additive noise model for wavelength-division multiplexing over dual-polarization optical fiber channels. The model includes three hidden Gauss-Markov processes: phase noise, polarization rotation, and additive noise. Particle filtering is used to compute lower bounds on the capacity of multi-carrier communication with frequency-dependent powers and delays. A gain of 0.17 bits/s/Hz/pol in spectral efficiency or 0.8 dB in power efficiency is achieved with respect to existing models at their p…
The concept of a fiber aided wireless network architecture (FAWNA) is introduced in [Ray et al., Allerton Conference 2005], which allows high-speed mobile connectivity by leveraging the speed of optical networks. In this paper, we consider a single-input, multiple-output (SIMO) FAWNA, which consists of a SIMO wireless channel and an optical fiber channel, connected through wireless-optical interfaces. We propose a scheme where the received wireless signal at each interface is quantized and sent over the fiber. Though our architecture is similar to that of the classical CEO problem, our problem…
By taking advantage of the temporal correlations of the nonlinear phase noise in WDM systems we show that the capacity of a nonlinear fiber link is notably higher than what is currently assumed. This advantage is translated into the doubling of the link distance for a fixed transmission rate.
A number of simplified models, based on perturbation theory, have been proposed for the fiber-optical channel and have been extensively used in the literature. Although these models are mainly developed for the low-power regime, they are used at moderate or high powers as well. It remains unclear to what extent the capacity of these models is affected by the simplifying assumptions under which they are derived. In this paper, we consider single channel data transmission based on three continuous-time optical models i) a regular perturbative channel, ii) a logarithmic perturbative channel, and …
A novel technique to optimize the input distribution and compute a lower bound for the capacity of the nonlinear optical fiber channel is proposed. The technique improves previous bounds obtained with the additive white Gaussian noise decoding metric.
A correlated phase-and-additive-noise (CPAN) mismatched model is developed for wavelength division multiplexing over optical fiber channels governed by the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Both the phase and additive noise processes of the CPAN model are Gauss-Markov whereas previous work uses Wiener phase noise and white additive noise. Second order statistics are derived and lower bounds on the capacity are computed by simulations. The CPAN model characterizes nonlinearities better than existing models in the sense that it achieves better information rates. For example, the model gains 0.35 d…
The emerging cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) is a promising scheme to tackle the capacity crunch in wireless networks. Designing the optimal fronthaul network in the CF-mMIMIO is of utmost importance to deploy a cost- and energy-efficient network. In this paper, we present a framework to optimally design the fronthaul network of CF-mMIMO utilizing optical fiber and free space optical (FSO) technologies. We study an uplink data transmission of the CF-mMIMO network wherein each of the distributed access points (APs) is connected to a central processing unit (CPU) thro…
The capacity of the channel defined by the stochastic nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which includes the effects of the Kerr nonlinearity and amplified spontaneous emission noise, is considered in the case of zero dispersion. In the absence of dispersion, this channel behaves as a collection of parallel per-sample channels. The conditional probability density function of the nonlinear per-sample channels is derived using both a sum-product and a Fokker-Planck differential equation approach. It is shown that, for a fixed noise power, the per-sample capacity grows unboundedly with input signal. …
In our previous paper [Phys. Rev. E 95, 062122 (2017)] we considered the optical channel modelled by the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with zero dispersion and additive Gaussian noise. We found per-sample channel capacity rof this model. In the present paper we extend per-sample model by introducing the initial signal dependence on time and the output signal detection procedure. The proposed model is a closer approximation of the realistic communication link than the per-sample model where there is no dependence of the initial signal on time. For the proposed model we found the correlators of…
Optical fiber signals with high power exhibit spectral broadening that seems to limit capacity. To study spectral broadening, the autocorrelation function of the output signal given the input signal is derived for a simplified fiber model that has zero dispersion, distributed optical amplification (OA), and idealized spatial noise processes. The autocorrelation function is used to upper bound the output power of bandlimited or time-resolution limited receivers, and thereby to bound spectral broadening and the capacity of receivers with thermal noise. The output power scales at most as the squa…
Technology is moving towards space division multiplexing in optical fiber to keep up the trend in rate increase over time and to avoid an imminent capacity crunch. Thus, it is of paramount interest to estimate the potential gains of this approach. As more spatial channels are being packed into a single fiber, the increased crosstalk necessitates the use of MIMO to guarantee reliable operation. In this paper, we exploit the analogy between an optical fiber and a model from mesoscopic physics - a chaotic cavity - to obtain a novel channel model for the optical fiber. The model captures both rand…
The optical fiber multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) per spatial path is treated. The spatial dimensions represent the multiple modes employed for transmission and the cross-talk between them originates in the multiplexers and demultiplexers, which are polarization dependent and thus timevarying. The upper bounds from free-space IM/DD MIMO channels are adapted to the fiber case, and the constellation constrained capacity is constructively estimated using the Blahut-Arimoto algorithm. An autoencoder is then proposed to optimize a…
It is shown that signal energy is the only available degree-of-freedom (DOF) for fiber-optic transmission as the input power tends to infinity. With $n$ signal DOFs at the input, $n-1$ DOFs are asymptotically lost to signal-noise interactions. The main observation is that, nonlinearity introduces a multiplicative noise in the channel, similar to fading in wireless channels. The channel is viewed in the spherical coordinate system, where signal vector $\underline{X}\in\mathbb{C}^n$ is represented in terms of its norm $|\underline{X}|$ and direction $\underline{\hat{X}}$. The multiplicative nois…
This paper focuses on delivering quantified results for the evaluation of the aggregated impact of stochastic antenna misalignment, multipath fading and hardware imperfections on the terahertz (THz) wireless fiber extenders. In this line, we present the appropriate signal model that accommodates the different technical and environmental parameters. In particular, it takes into consideration the antenna gains, the central frequency, the transmission range, the environmental conditions, i.e. temperature, humidity and pressure, the spatial jitter between the transmitter and receiver antennas, whi…
Constellation shaping is a practical and effective technique to improve the performance and the rate adaptivity of optical communication systems. In principle, it could also be used to mitigate the impact of nonlinear effects, possibly increasing the information rate beyond the current limit dictated by fiber nonlinearity. However, this appealing idea is frustrated by the difficulty of designing an effective shaping strategy that takes into account the nonlinearity and long memory of the fiber channel, as well as the possible interplay with other nonlinearity mitigation strategies. As a result…
MIMO processing techniques in fiber optical communications have been proposed as a promising approach to meet increasing demand for information throughput. In this context, the multiple channels correspond to the multiple modes and/or multiple cores in the fiber. In this paper we characterize the distribution of the mutual information with Gaussian input in a simple channel model for this system. Assuming significant cross talk between cores, negligible backscattering and near-lossless propagation in the fiber, we model the transmission channel as a random complex unitary matrix. The loss in t…
This paper compares and evaluates a set of non-parametric mutual information estimators with the goal of providing a novel toolset to progress in the analysis of the capacity of the nonlinear optical channel, which is currently an open problem. In the first part of the paper, the methods of the study are presented. The second part details their application to several optically-related channels to highlight their features.
The achievable information rates of optical communication networks have been widely increased over the past four decades with the introduction and development of optical amplifiers, coherent detection, advanced modulation formats, and digital signal processing techniques. These developments promoted the revolution of optical communication systems and the growth of Internet, towards the direction of high-capacity and long-distance transmissions. The performance of long-haul high-capacity optical fiber communication systems is significantly degraded by transmission impairments, such as chromatic…
A fiber optic channel is modeled in a variety of ways; from the simple additive white complex Gaussian noise model, to models that incorporate memory in the channel. Because of Kerr nonlinearity, a simple model is not a good approximation to an optical fiber. Hence we study a fiber optic channel with finite memory and provide an achievable bound on channel capacity that improves upon a previously known bound.
A memoryless interference network model is introduced that is based on non-linear phenomena observed when transmitting information over optical fiber using wavelength division multiplexing. The main characteristic of the model is that amplitude variations on one carrier wave are converted to phase variations on another carrier wave, i.e., the carriers interfere with each other through amplitude-to-phase conversion. For the case of two carriers, a new technique called interference focusing is proposed where each carrier achieves the capacity pre-log 1, thereby doubling the pre-log of 1/2 achiev…
Capacity is the eternal pursuit for communication systems due to the overwhelming demand of bandwidth hungry applications. As the backbone infrastructure of modern communication networks, the optical fiber transmission system undergoes a significant capacity growth over decades by exploiting available physical dimensions (time, frequency, quadrature, polarization and space) of the optical carrier for multiplexing. For each dimension, stringent orthogonality must be guaranteed for perfect separation of independent multiplexed signals. To catch up with the ever-increasing capacity requirement, i…
In multi-(core/mode) optical fiber communication, the transmission channel can be modeled as a complex sub-matrix of the Haar-distributed unitary matrix (complex Jacobi unitary ensemble). In this letter, we present new analytical expressions of the upper and lower bounds for the ergodic capacity of multiple-input multiple-output Jacobi-fading channels. Recent results on the determinant of the Jacobi unitary ensemble are employed to derive a tight lower bound on the ergodic capacity. We use Jensen's inequality to provide an analytical closed-form upper bound to the ergodic capacity at any signa…
An upper bound on the capacity of a cascade of nonlinear and noisy channels is presented. The cascade mimics the split-step Fourier method for computing waveform propagation governed by the stochastic generalized nonlinear Schroedinger equation. It is shown that the spectral efficiency of the cascade is at most log(1+SNR), where SNR is the receiver signal-to-noise ratio. The results may be applied to optical fiber channels. However, the definition of bandwidth is subtle and leaves open interpretations of the bound. Some of these interpretations are discussed.
We consider a model nondispersive nonlinear optical fiber channel with additive white Gaussian noise at large $\mathrm{SNR}$ (signal-to-noise ratio) in the intermediate power region. Using Feynman path-integral technique we for the first time find the optimal input signal distribution maximizing the channel's per-sample mutual information. The finding of the optimal input signal distribution allows us to improve previously known estimates for the channel capacity. The output signal entropy, conditional entropy, and per-sample mutual information are calculated for Gaussian, half-Gaussian and mo…
The channel capacity of a nonlinear, dispersive fiber-optic link is revisited. To this end, the popular Gaussian noise (GN) model is extended with a parameter to account for the finite memory of realistic fiber channels. This finite-memory model is harder to analyze mathematically but, in contrast to previous models, it is valid also for nonstationary or heavy-tailed input signals. For uncoded transmission and standard modulation formats, the new model gives the same results as the regular GN model when the memory of the channel is about 10 symbols or more. These results confirm previous resul…
Optical switching has been considered as a natural choice to keep pace with growing fiber link capacity. One key research issue of all-optical switching is the design of optical queues by using optical crossbar switches and fiber delay lines (SDL). In this paper, we focus on the construction of an optical priority queue with a single $(M+2)\times (M+2)$ crossbar switch and $M$ fiber delay lines, and evaluate it in terms of the buffer size of the priority queue. Currently, the best known upper bound of the buffer size is $O(2^M)$, while existing methods can only construct a priority queue with …
In this work, targeting, e.g., future generation cellular, microwave-links, or optical fiber systems, we propose a new geometric shaping design for golden angle modulation (GAM) based on a (double) truncated Gaussian input distribution. The design improves the mutual information (MI), and the peak-to-average power ratio, over the full signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) range relative to two key GAM schemes introduced in [1],[2]. Inspired by the proposed geometric shaping, a simpler, SNR-dependent, design is also suggested. The performance is numerically evaluated with respect to MI and compared with …
In digital systems such as fiber optical communications, the ratio between probability of errors of type $1\to 0$ and $0 \to 1$ can be large. Practically, one can assume that only one type of error can occur. These errors arecalled asymmetric. Unidirectional errors differ from asymmetric type of errors; here both $1 \to 0$ and $0 \to 1$ type of errors are possible, but in any submittedcodeword all the errors are of the same type. This can be generalized for the $q$-ary case. We consider $q$-ary unidirectional channels with feedback and give bounds for the capacity error function. It turns out …
Multimode fibers (MMFs) offer a cost-effective connection solution for small and medium length networks. However, data rates through multimode fibers are traditionally limited by modal dispersion. Signal processing and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) have been shown to be effective at combating these limitations, but device design for the specific purpose of MIMO in MMFs is still an open issue. This paper utilizes a statistical field propagation model for MMFs to aid the analysis and designs of MMF laser and detector arrays, and aims to improve data rates of the fiber. Simulations reveal…
We consider the information channel described by Schrödinger equation with additive Gaussian noise. We introduce the model of the input signal and the model of the output signal receiver. For this channel, using perturbation theory for the small nonlinearity parameter, we calculate the first three terms of the expansion of the conditional probability density function in the nonlinearity parameter. At large signal-to-noise power ratio we calculate the conditional entropy, the output signal entropy, and the mutual information in the leading and next-to-leading order in the nonlinearity parameter…
We demonstrate a high capacity IF-over-fiber mobile fronthaul solution for multi-user massive MIMO 5G RAN. Using this scheme, a record aggregated radio bandwidth of 25.6 GHz was transmitted on a single optical wavelength over 40 km without fiber chromatic dispersion compensation
Two discrete-time interference channel models are developed for information transmission over a single span of optical fiber using wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and lumped amplification. The models are derived from the nonlinear Schroedinger (NLS) equation by including the nonlinear phenomena of self-phase modulation (SPM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) but ignoring four-wave mixing (FWM), polarization effects and group velocity dispersion (GVD) within WDM bands. The first model also ignores GVD across WDM bands, referred to as group velocity mistmatch (GVM). For the case of two use…
All-optical switching has been considered as a natural choice to keep pace with growing fiber link capacity. One key research issue of all-optical switching is the design of optical buffers for packet contention resolution. One of the most general buffering schemes is optical priority queue, where every packet is associated with a unique priority upon its arrival and departs the queue in order of priority, and the packet with the lowest priority is always dropped when a new packet arrives but the buffer is full. In this paper, we focus on the feedback construction of an optical priority queue …
It is known that fiber nonlinearities induce crosstalk in a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) system, which limits the capacity of such systems as the transmitted signal power is increased. A network user in a WDM system is an entity that operates around a given optical wavelength. Traditionally, the channel capacity of a WDM system has been analyzed under different assumptions for the transmitted signals of the other users, while treating the interference arising from these users as noise. In this paper, we instead take a multiuser information theoretic view and treat the optical WDM syst…
A lower bound on the capacity of the split-step Fourier channel is derived. The channel under study is a concatenation of smaller segments, within which three operations are performed on the signal, namely, nonlinearity, linearity, and noise addition. Simulation results indicate that for a fixed number of segments, our lower bound saturates in the high-power regime and that the larger the number of segments is, the higher is the saturation point. We also obtain an alternative lower bound, which is less tight but has a simple closed-form expression. This bound allows us to conclude that the sat…
Using a change of basis in the algebra of symmetric functions, we compute the moments of the Hermitian Jacobi process. After a careful arrangement of the terms and the evaluation of the determinant of an `almost upper-triangular' matrix, we end up with a moment formula which is considerably simpler than the one derived in \cite{Del-Dem}. As an application, we propose the Hermitian Jacobi process as a dynamical model for optical fibers MIMO channels and compute its Shannon capacity for small enough power at the transmitter. Moreover, when the size of the Hermitian Jacobi process is larger than …
We establish the classical capacity of optical quantum channels as a sharp transition between two regimes---one which is an error-free regime for communication rates below the capacity, and the other in which the probability of correctly decoding a classical message converges exponentially fast to zero if the communication rate exceeds the classical capacity. This result is obtained by proving a strong converse theorem for the classical capacity of all phase-insensitive bosonic Gaussian channels, a well-established model of optical quantum communication channels, such as lossy optical fibers, …
