Bounds on the Per-Sample Capacity of Zero-Dispersion Simplified Fiber-Optical Channel Models

Abstract: A number of simplified models, based on perturbation theory, have been proposed for the fiber-optical channel and have been extensively used in the literature. Although these models are mainly developed for the low-power regime, they are used at moderate or high powers as well. It remains unclear to what extent the capacity of these models is affected by the simplifying assumptions under which they are derived. In this paper, we consider single channel data transmission based on three continuous-time optical models i) a regular perturbative channel, ii) a logarithmic perturbative channel, and iii) the stochastic nonlinear Schr\"odinger (NLS) channel. We apply two simplifying assumptions on these channels to obtain analytically tractable discrete-time models. Namely, we neglect the channel memory (fiber dispersion) and we use a sampling receiver. These assumptions bring into question the physical relevance of the models studied in the paper. Therefore, the results should be viewed as a first step toward analyzing more realistic channels. We investigate the per-sample capacity of the simplified discrete-time models. Specifically, i) we establish tight bounds on the capacity of the regular perturbative channel; ii) we obtain the capacity of the logarithmic perturbative channel; and iii) we present a novel upper bound on the capacity of the zero-dispersion NLS channel. Our results illustrate that the capacity of these models departs from each other at high powers because these models yield different capacity pre-logs. Since all three models are based on the same physical channel, our results highlight that care must be exercised in using simplified channel models in the high-power regime.