Capacity Limits of Information Transmission in Optically-Routed Fiber Networks

Optical networks are the backbone of our information society and the single-mode optical fibre is its transmission medium. The 'fibre channel' differs in many ways from other commonly encountered communication channels such as wireless and satellite channels. the most crucial difference is the presence of a nonlinear phenomenon in the fibre, the optical Kerr effect, Optimally managing the Kerr nonlinearity is central to deter- mining the capacity limit of modern optically-routed networks. We present here a conservative estimate of the fibre channel capacity using reverse signal propagation in a bandlimited optical path of an optically-routed network. This study fully account for all instantaneous fibre Kerr nonlinearities, including both signal and noise. Capacity per unit of bandwidth (or spectral efficiency) well above current record experimental demonstration are predicted.