Performance of electronic equalization applied to innovative transmission techniques

We investigate in this article the use of electronic equalization on dispersion limited systems for different modulation formats. Besides analyzing equalization on standard NRZ intensity modulation as a reference, we focus on two advanced modulation formats, Duobinary and Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK) which are recently gaining large attention. We demonstrate that the introduction of an electronic equalizer strongly improves standard NRZ performance, whereas it has a limited effect on Duobinary and DPSK formats. Moreover, we give rules for the optimal choice of the equalizer transversal filter parameters, i.e., the number of taps and the delay between taps.