Artificial Neural Network Nonlinear Equalizer for Coherent Optical OFDM

We propose a novel low-complexity artificial neural network (ANN)-based nonlinear equalizer (NLE) for coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) and compare it with the recent inverse Volterra-series transfer function (IVSTF)-based NLE over up to 1000 km of uncompensated links. Demonstration of ANN-NLE at 80-Gb/s CO-OFDM using 16-quadrature amplitude modulation reveals a $Q$ -factor improvement after 1000-km transmission of 3 and 1 dB with respect to the linear equalization and IVSTF-NLE, respectively