Real-Valued Neural Networks for Complex-Valued Impairment Compensation Using Digital Up-Conversion

Analog distortion compensation based on digital signal processing methods are widely applied for transmitter or receiver impairments in various digital communication systems. Recently, several neural network methods were developed for distortion compensation. However, while digital communication systems are typically complex-valued, neural networks are mostly designed to work with real-valued inputs. Thus, adaptations of the network architecture or input data should be applied. In this article a method for using a single-input real-valued neural network for digital communication-based complex-valued signals without any modifications to the neural network is proposed. The method transforms the complex-valued signal to a real-valued one by taking the real component of a complex frequency offset applied through digital up-conversion, without affecting the distortion, therefore allowing standard neural network-based functionality with significant reduction in size. The method is tested with a multi-layer perceptron and gated recurrent unit architectures applied over a generic Wiener-Hammerstein model for the case of equalization of a coherent optical system. A reduction of about 7% and 26% in network size is shown for the gated recurrent unit-based and multi-layer perceptron-based architectures respectively, without any significant change in performance. This size reduction capability shows the high potential in applying the proposed method in neural network-based equalization and pre-distortion operations.