This textbook details the architecture of a digital coherent optical
system and describes its main digital signal processing (DSP)
algorithms. The authors first show how the combination of advanced
modulation techniques, DSP and coherent detection has led to significant
gains in capacity and ease of operation. The authors follow the path of
the information from its generation in the transmitter, to propagation
through the fiber and processing by the DSP algorithms in the receiver.
The work summarizes academic results and presents them in a didactic way
to students and practitioners working on the area of optical
communications. A full suite of classroom materials is included for easy
integration into a curriculum, containing theoretic and simulation
problems, and off-the-shelf Matlab/Octave functions.