Methods, systems, and devices are described for modulating and demodulating data on optical signals. During modulation, at least one stream of symbol mapped bits is filtered with at least one pulse shaping filter to reduce a bandwidth of the stream of bits and to pre-compensate for at least one identified non-ideal transmission condition. The filtered bits are modulated onto a waveform in the digital domain, and the modulated filtered bits are transmitted to digital-to-analog converter. The output of the digital-to-analog converter is converted to an optical signal. During demodulation, a received optical signal is sampled at a first sampling rate at an ADC, downsampled to a lower sampling rate for filtering, filtered with at least one discrete pulse-shaping filter, upsampled for equalization and demodulation, and then equalized and demodulated.