Nonlinear Fourier transform based optical communication systems with FBMC wave-carriers

The nonlinear Fourier transforms (NFT) transmission scheme continues to show a lot of potential in the field of optical communications. Nonlinear frequency division multiplexing (NFDM), which is based on the NFT concept, has been shown to offer immunity against Kerr nonlinearity and dispersion in optical fiber transmission systems. However, some issues such as relatively low achievable information rate (AIR) and the interaction of the optical signal with the inline amplifier noise still constitute a major setback for NFT-based schemes. In this work, we examine what is believed to be for the first time, the use of physical layer for dynamic spectrum access (PHYDYAS), which is a type of filter bank multi-carrier (FBMC) method, as a wave-carrier in NFT-based systems. The performance of the PHYDYAS wave-carrier is then compared with the Hermite-Gaussian (HG) based NFT schemes, which have been demonstrated to offer better performance than the traditional sinc- or root-raised cosine based subcarriers. We demonstrate that the proposed PHYDYAS-based NFT system offers a high achievable information rate (AIR) of up to 7.2 bits/symbol and shows a highly desirable resilience to inline amplifier noise when compared to HG-based methods.