Optimal Design of Eigenvalues for the Full-Spectrum Modulated Nonlinear Frequency Division Multiplexing Transmission System

Nonlinear frequency division multiplexing (NFDM) system is an optional candidate to overcome the fiber nonlinearity limit. A full-spectrum modulated NFDM system, modulating data on combined continuous spectrum (CS) and discrete spectrum (DS) together, was proposed in recent years to improve the data rates and spectral efficiency (SE) by exploiting all the degrees of freedom offered in the nonlinear spectrum. However, the selection of discrete eigenvalues greatly affects the performance of both CS and DS. Designing appropriate eigenvalues of DS is an important issue to ensure the high SE and excellent performance of the system. In this paper, we discussed the selcection principle of eigenvalues and analyzed it from multiple perspectives, 11 eigenvalues with 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (64QAM) are selected for DS. Besides optimizing the eigenvalues at the transmitter, the linear minimum mean-square estimate (LMMSE) method was used at the receiver to furtherly improve the performance of DS. Through the numerical simulation, a 113 Gb/s (SE of 2.8 bits/s/Hz) full-spectrum modulated NFDM system was set up and transmitted 1120 km distance, where the Q-factors of both CS and DS are above the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) threshold. The results provide a way to design an efficiently full-spectrum modulated NFDM system.