Calculation of power limit due to fiber nonlinearity in optical OFDM systems

Abstract
We develop a simple formula for estimating the effect of Four-Wave Mixing (FWM) on received signal quality in coherent optical systems using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) for dispersion compensation. This shows the nonlinear limit is substantially independent of the number of OFDM subcarriers. Our analysis agrees well with full split-step Fourier method simulations, so allows the nonlinear limit of multi-span systems to be estimated without lengthy simulations.