Analysis of electronic dispersion compensation for step-index polymer optical fibre by use of an advanced simulation model

A novel system-level simulation environment is presented for the evaluation of step-index polymer optical fibre transmission systems. Key element is a new fibre model, which incorporates the three major attributes describing light propagation in SI-POF: the mode-dependent attenuation, the modal dispersion and the mode coupling process. Inter-symbol interference (ISI) due to modal dispersion can be mitigated in the receiver by means of electronic dispersion compensation. In this work, we present the performance of an analog equaliser scheme based on a (sub-)optimal a-posteriori-probability (APP) technique, which increases the achievable fibre length for error-free transmission at 1 Gbit/s from 11 to 53m. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.