An optical network includes a transmitter portion configured to (i) precode an input digitized stream of symbols into a precoded symbol stream, (ii) pulse shape the precoded symbol stream with an eigenvalue channel matrix, and (iii) transmit the pulse shaped symbol stream over a digital optical link. The optical network further includes a receiver portion configured to (i) recover the pulse shaped symbol stream from the digital optical link, (ii) decompose eigenvalues of the eigenvalue channel matrix from the recovered symbol stream, and (iii) decode the decomposed symbol stream into an output symbol stream.