The use of digital signal processors (DSP) to equalize coherent optical communication systems based on spatial division multiplexing (SDM) techniques is widespread in current optical receivers. However, most of DSP implementation approaches found in the literature assume a negligible mode-dependent loss (MDL). This paper is focused on the linear multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) receiver designed to optimize the minimum mean square error (MMSE) for a coherent SDM optical communication system, without previous assumptions on receiver oversampling or analog front-end realizations. The influence of the roll-off factor of a generic pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) transmitter on system performance is studied as well. As a main result of the proposed approach, the ability of a simple match filter (MF) based MIMO receiver to completely eliminate inter-symbol interference (ISI) and crosstalk for SDM systems under the assumption of negligible MDL is demonstrated. The performance of the linear MIMO fractionally-spaced equalizer (FSE) receiver for an SDM system with a MDL-impaired channel is then evaluated by numerical simulations using novel system performance indicators, in the form of signal to noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) loss, with respect to the case without MDL. System performance improvements by increasing the transmitter roll-off factor are also quantified.
Keywords: MIMO adaptive equalizer; MMSE; coherent optical communication; fractional-spaced equalizer (FSE); matched filter; optical fiber communication; polarization division multiplexing; spatial division multiplexing (SDM).