A nonlinear electrical equalizer with decision feedback for OOK optical communication systems

In this paper we introduce a nonlinear equalizer using the Radial Basis Function (RBF) network with decision feedback equalizer (DFE) for electronic dispersion compensation in optical communication systems with on-off-keying and a direct detection receiver. The RBF method introduces a non-linear equalization technique suitable for optical communication direct detection systems that include nonlinear transformation at the photodetector. A bit error rate performance comparison shows that the RBF with DFE out performs the RBF without DFE and achieves similar results provided by maximum likelihood sequence estimator.