Towards FPGA Implementation of Neural Network-Based Nonlinearity Mitigation Equalizers in Coherent Optical Transmission Systems

For the first time, recurrent and feedforward neural network-based equalizers for nonlinearity compensation are implemented in an FPGA, with a level of complexity comparable to that of a dispersion equalizer. We demonstrate that the NN-based equalizers can outperform a 1-step-per-span DBP.