In coherent optical systems employing electronic digital signal processing, the fiber chromatic dispersion can be gracefully compensated in electronic domain without resorting to optical techniques. Unlike optical dispersion compensator, the electronic equalizer enhances the impairments from the laser phase noise. This equalization-enhanced phase noise (EEPN) imposes a tighter constraint on the receive laser phase noise for transmission systems with high symbol rate and large electronically-compensated chromatic dispersion.