Upper bound on the capacity of a cascade of nonlinear and noisy channels

Abstract

An upper bound on the capacity of a cascade of nonlinear and noisy channels is presented. The cascade mimics the split-step Fourier method for computing waveform propagation governed by the stochastic generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It is shown that the spectral efficiency of the cascade is at most log(1+SNR), where SNR is the receiver signal-to-noise ratio. The results may be applied to optical fiber channels. However, the definition of bandwidth is subtle and leaves open interpretations of the bound. Some of these interpretations are discussed.