Transmission of information via the non-linear Scroedinger equation: The random Gaussian input case

Abstract

The explosion of demand for ultra-high information transmission rates over the last decade has necessitated the usage of increasingly high light intensities for fiber optical transmissions. As a result, the fiber non-linearities need to be treated non-perturbatively. Similar analyses in the past have focused on the effects of non-linearities on existing transmission technologies, e.g. WDM. In this paper we take advantage of the fact that, under certain assumptions, light transmission through optical fibers can be described using the non-linear Schroedinger equation, which is exactly integrable. As a particular example, we show that in the low Gaussian noise limit, the Gaussian input distribution has a higher mutual information than the transmission using WDM over the same available bandwidth.