DBSCAN for nonlinear equalization in high-capacity multi-carrier optical communications

Coherent optical multi-carrier communications have recently dominated metro-regional and long-haul optical communications. However, the major obstacle of networks involving coherent multi-carrier signals such as coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) is the fiber-induced nonlinearity and the parametric noise amplification from cascaded optical amplifiers which results in significant nonlinear distortion among subcarriers. Here, we present the first nonlinear equalizer in optical communications using the traditional Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm and a novel modified version of DBSCAN which combines K-means clustering on the noisy un-clustered symbols. For a 24.72 Gbit/sec differential quaternary phase-shift keying (DQPSK) CO-OFDM system, the modified DBSCAN can increase the signal quality-factor by up to 2.158 dB compared to linear equalization at 500 km of transmission. The modified DBSCAN slightly outperforms the traditional DBSCAN, fuzzy-logic C-means, hierarchical and conventional K-means clustering at high launched optical powers.