2021 Volume 10 Issue 8 Pages 516-521
We numerically study transmission limitations of an unrepeated optical link using Kramers-Kronig (KK) relation-based direct detection. The transmission distance is limited by the thermal noise of the optical front-end and the signal distortions caused by fiber nonlinearity in optical amplifier-free transmission and by amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and fiber nonlinearities when pre-amplification is enabled at the receiver. The transmission limits of QPSK, 16-QAM, and 64-QAM modulation formats in optical amplifier-free 25-GBaud transmission can be extended from 109, 80, and 52 km to 186, 134, and 90 km by enabling pre-amplification at the receiver, respectively.