Mitigation of timing-misalignment-induced distortion using electronic equalizer in RZ/CSRZ systems

A novel method using cost-effective electronic equalizer is proposed to mitigate the impairment from timing misalignment (TM) between the pulse carver and data modulator in return-to-zero (RZ) and carrier-suppressed RZ systems. Simulations show that maximum likelihood sequence equalizer (MLSE) significantly reduces TM-induced power penalty and sampling phase sensitivity. Simultaneous mitigation of both TM-induced distortion and polarization-mode dispersion using a single MLSE is also demonstrated.