Effective Approach to Estimate Optical System Performance From Numerical Simulations

We assess by Monte Carlo simulations the validity of a generalized-noise approximation for system performance estimation; the model introduces a pattern-dependent noise density into well-known analytical expressions. Numerical simulations show that this is particularly useful to describe system impairments in the nonlinear fiber regime. Fitting of probability density functions estimated from simulations of 40-Gb/s systems makes apparent a number of unexpected features.