Johnny Karout

4-PAM for high-speed short-range optical communications

In this work, we compare 4-pulse amplitude modulation and on-off keying modulation formats at high speed for short-range optical communication systems. The transmission system comprised a directly modulated vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser operating at a wavelength of 850 nm, an OM3+ multimode fiber link, and a photodetector detecting the intensity at the receiver end. The modulation formats were compared both at the same bit-rate and at the same symbol rate. The maximum bit-rate used was 25 Gbps. Propagation distances up to 600 m were investigated at 12.5 Gbps. All measurements were done in real time and without any equalization.

Optimizing Constellations for Single-Subcarrier Intensity-Modulated Optical Systems

We optimize modulation formats for the additive white Gaussian noise channel with nonnegative input, also known as the intensity-modulated direct-detection channel, with and without confining them to a lattice structure. Our optimization criteria are the average electrical, average optical, and peak power. The nonnegative constraint on the input to the channel is translated into a conical constraint in signal space, and modulation formats are designed by sphere packing inside this cone. Some dense packings are found, which yield more power-efficient modulation formats than previously known. For example, at a spectral efficiency of 1.5 bit/s/Hz, the modulation format optimized for average electrical power has a 2.55 dB average electrical power gain over the best known format to achieve a symbol error rate of 10-6 . The corresponding gains for formats optimized for average and peak optical power are 1.35 and 1.72 dB, respectively. Using modulation formats optimized for peak power in average-power limited systems results in a smaller power penalty than when using formats optimized for average power in peak-power limited systems. We also evaluate the modulation formats in terms of their mutual information to predict their performance in the presence of capacity-achieving error-correcting codes, and finally show numerically and analytically that the optimal modulation formats for reliable transmission in the wideband regime have only one nonzero point.

Power efficient subcarrier modulation for intensity modulated channels

We compare formats for optical intensity modulation limited by thermal noise with the assumption of having ideal devices. At the same bitrate and bandwidth, a hitherto unknown format turns out to be more power efficient than known formats. This new modulation, which is a hybrid between on-off keying and phase-shift keying, belongs to the subcarrier modulation family. At asymptotically high signal-to-noise ratios, this hybrid scheme has a 1.2 dB average electrical power gain and 0.6 dB average optical power gain compared to OOK, while it has a 3.0 dB average electrical power gain and 2.1 dB average optical power gain compared to subcarrier QPSK.

Experimental demonstration of an optimized 16-ary four-dimensional modulation format using optical OFDM

We experimentally demonstrate the best known 16-ary 4-d modulation format at 24.8 Gb/s using coherent optical OFDM, achieving 0.58 dB OSNR gain over PDM-QPSK at a SER of 10-2. With 7% overhead optimal codes, a 0.38 dB gain is theoretically achievable.

Experimental comparison of modulation formats in IM/DD links

We present an experimental comparison of modulation formats for optical intensity modulated links with direct detection. Specifically, we compare OOK, QPSK on an electrical subcarrier and a new modulation format named OOPSK. The OOPSK modulation format is shown to have better sensitivity than the other modulation formats, in agreement with theoretical predictions. The impact of propagation in multimode fiber is also studied and the results show that all modulation formats have similar sensitivity penalties, with respect to the fibre length.

Designing Power-Efficient Modulation Formats for Noncoherent Optical Systems

We optimize modulation formats for the additive white Gaussian noise channel with a nonnegative input constraint, also known as the intensity-modulated direct detection channel, with and without confining them to a lattice structure. Our optimization criteria are the average electrical and optical power. The nonnegativity input signal constraint is translated into a conical constraint in signal space, and modulation formats are designed by sphere packing inside this cone. Some remarkably dense packings are found, which yield more power-efficient modulation formats than previously known. For example, at a spectral efficiency of 1 bit/s/Hz, the obtained modulation format offers a 0.86 dB average electrical power gain and 0.43 dB average optical power gain over the previously best known modulation formats to achieve a symbol error rate of 10^−6. This modulation turns out to have a lattice-based structure. At a spectral efficiency of 3/2 bits/s/Hz and to achieve a symbol error rate of 10^−6, the modulation format obtained for optimizing the average electrical power offers a 0.58 dB average electrical power gain over the best lattice-based modulation and 2.55 dB gain over the best previously known format. However, the modulation format optimized for average optical power offers a 0.46 dB average optical power gain over the best lattice-based modulation and 1.35 dB gain over the best previously known format.

CMA misconvergence in coherent optical communication for signals generated from a single PRBS

In the experimental study of modulators for coherent optical communications, it is common to generate multilevel signals using a single pseudo-random binary sequence. This simple experimental realization leads to symbol correlation. When modulators are studied in combination with adaptive receiver algorithms that rely on independent data, misconvergence may result. In this contribution, we investigate the impact of such correlation on a standard blind equalization method and provide guidelines to avoid misconvergence. Our results indicate that care needs to be taken when using a single PRBS sequence and that decorrelation delays must be chosen appropriately. We present simulation and theoretical results for 16-QAM, and show how our results can be applied to other multi-level constellations.

Location-Aided Pilot Contamination Elimination for Massive MIMO Systems

Massive MIMO systems, while being a promising technology for 5G systems, face a number of practical challenges. Among those, pilot contamination stands out as a key bottleneck to design high-capacity beamforming methods. We propose and analyze a location-aided approach to reduce the pilot contamination effect in uplink channel estimation for massive MIMO systems. The proposed method exploits the location of user terminals, scatterers, and base stations. The approach removes the need for direct estimation of large covariance matrices and provides good channel estimation performance in the large antenna regime.

Performance Trade-Off Investigation of B-IFDMA

A performance trade-off investigation is carried out between different possible uplink multiple access schemes, that are based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), for International Mobile Telecommunication (IMT) Advanced systems. Between the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) precoded systems with different subcarrier allocation mappings and systems lacking DFT-precoders, Block Interleaved Frequency Division Multiple Access (B-IFDMA) is shown to provide a good trade-off between the frequency diversity collected, envelope properties achieved, and channel estimation performance compared to the other mapping schemes. The schemes are analyzed in the presence of the different possible modules which include equalizers, modulators, interleavers, and channel codes. In particular, robust codes such as Turbo codes are able to collect the diversity provided by such schemes, and B-IFDMA systems is shown to be able to beat the other systems in bit error rate (BER) performance terms.

Location-Aided Pilot Contamination Avoidance for Massive MIMO Systems

Pilot contamination, defined as the interference during the channel estimation process due to reusing the same pilot sequences in neighboring cells, can severely degrade the performance of massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. In this paper, we propose a location-based approach to mitigating the pilot contamination problem for uplink multiple-input multiple-output systems. Our approach makes use of the approximate locations of mobile devices to provide good estimates of the channel statistics between the mobile devices and their corresponding base stations. Specifically, we aim at avoiding pilot contamination even when the number of base station antennas is not very large, and when multiple users from different cells, or even in the same cell, are assigned the same pilot sequence. First, we characterize a desired angular region of the target user at the serving base station based on the number of base station antennas and the location of the target user, and make the observation that in this region the interference is close to zero due to the spatial separability. Second, based on this observation, we propose pilot coordination methods for multi-user multi-cell scenarios to avoid pilot contamination. The numerical results indicate that the proposed pilot contamination avoidance schemes enhance the quality of the channel estimation and thereby improve the per-cell sum rate offered by target base stations.