ed. The total fiber link length was 214 km of the G.652 fiber with a nominal dispersion value at 1550 nm of 17 ps/ (nm km), for a total link dispersion of about 3638 ps/nm. The amount of transmitted power was varied to evaluate the performance of the MLSE EDC against SPM as a function of Technology for Telecommunications: Integrated Optics and Microelectronics SN (dB) Residual dispersion 1938 nps/nm FIGURE 5.62 Performance of the MLSE EDC compared with that of a similar uncompensated receiver in the case of 10 No comp. Gbit/s speed. The total fiber link length was 214km with a nominal dispersion value at 1550 nm of 17ps/ (nm km) and part of the dispersion is optically com- pensated at the receiver. The amount of transmitted power was varied to evaluate the performance of the MLSE EDC against SPM as a function of residual chro- matic dispersion. The baseline SN is about 12dB due to the use of the FEC at the receiver. (After Downie, Launched power (dBm) J.D. et al., IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., 19(13), 1017, 2007.) residual chromatic dispersion. The baseline SN0 is about 12 dB due to the use of the FEC at the receiver. The EDC figure of merit is always the increment of the optical signal to noise ratio (ASNo) needed to overcome the effect of dispersion in a receiver equipped with a standard FEC. Even if MLSE algorithms perform better even in their most reduced form, the circuitry implementing MLSE is in any case much more complex with respect to the circuitry imple- menting an FFE-DFE and it requires a much more complex design. This is going to influ- ence prices of MLSE equalizers, at least up to the moment in which they will be diffused in large volumes. Moreover, if an FFE-DFE introduces slight modifications to the signal statistical distri- bution, the MLSE changes it more radically. As a matter of fact, MLSE is a sort of convolution decoding and the surviving errors at the MLSE output have characteristic configurations depending on the MLSE structure [86]. This affects the performances of a traditional FEC. Op