Real-time implementation of digital signal processing for coherent optical digital communication systems

Digital signal-processing-based coherent optical communication systems are widely viewed as the most promising next-generation long-haul transport systems. One of the biggest challenges in building these systems is the implementation of signal processors that are able to deal with signaling rates of a few tens of giga-samples per second. In this paper, we discuss implementation options and design considerations with respect to hardware realization and DSP implementation.