Timo Pfau

Hardware-Efficient Coherent Digital Receiver Concept With Feedforward Carrier Recovery for

This paper presents a novel digital feedforward carrier recovery algorithm for arbitrary M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) constellations in an intradyne coherent optical receiver. The approach does not contain any feedback loop and is therefore highly tolerant against laser phase noise. This is crucial, especially for higher order QAM constellations, which inherently have a smaller phase noise tolerance due to the lower spacing between adjacent constellation points. In addition to the mathematical description of the proposed carrier recovery algorithm also a possible hardware-efficient implementation in a parallelized system is presented and the performance of the algorithm is evaluated by Monte Carlo simulations for square 4-QAM (QPSK), 16-QAM, 64-QAM, and 256-QAM. For the simulations ASE noise and laser phase noise are considered as well as analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and internal resolution effects. For a 1 dB penalty at BER = 10-3, linewidth times symbol duration products of 4.1 x 10-4 (4-QAM), 1.4 x 10-4 (16-QAM), 4.0 x 10-5 (64-QAM) and 8.0 x 10-6 (256-QAM) are tolerable.

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Coherent optical communication systems promise superior performance, but their realization in real time also poses big technical challenges. After an introduction the potential of coherent optical transmission systems is shown as manifested in offline experiments. Then we present key components that are necessary to realize these systems in real time. We review recent achievements in realtime coherent communication and finally present the results of a realtime QPSK transmission system with a 3x3 coupler in the receiver. The achieved BER at a data rate of 1.4 Gbit/s is well below the FEC threshold.

-QAM Constellations

For the first time, synchronous quadrature phase-shift keying data is recovered in real-time after transmission with standard distributed feedback lasers using a digital inphase and quadrature receiver. Forward-error-correction-compatible performance is reached at 800 Mb/s after 63 km of fiber. Self-homodyne operation with an external cavity laser is error-free

Coherent optical communication: Towards realtime systems at 40 Gbit/s and beyond

In this paper, a phase-noise-tolerant two-stage carrier recovery concept for arbitrary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations is presented. Possible implementations are evaluated in simulations of square 16-QAM, 64-QAM, and 256-QAM transmission systems, considering fourth-power and decision-directed carrier recovery for the first stage. The second stage uses QAM feedforward carrier recovery. It is shown that the two-stage concept achieves the same phase noise tolerance as the original QAM feedforward carrier recovery concept, but reduces the required hardware effort by factors of 1.5-3 depending on the order of the QAM constellation.

First Real-Time Data Recovery for Synchronous QPSK Transmission With Standard DFB Lasers

A feedforward pilot-symbols-aided carrier-phase recovery scheme is described. The approach relies on pilot symbols that are time-division multiplexed with the transmitted data. In the scheme, an initial coarse estimation of the optical carrier phase, exploiting the knowledge of pilot symbols, is followed by a fine nondata-aided, or blind, estimation. The main advantage of the proposed solution is that of avoiding the phase- ambiguity problem after a cycle slip. The overhead and the impact on the performance of pilot symbols are investigated for long-haul transmission of 100-Gb/s polarization-multiplexed quadrature phase-shift keying wavelength-division-multiplexing signals in different scenarios. For homogeneous transmission, the proposed scheme outperforms blind carrier recovery with differential decoding.

Phase-Noise-Tolerant Two-Stage Carrier Recovery Concept for Higher Order QAM Formats

This letter presents a coherent digital polarization diversity receiver for real-time polarization-multiplexed synchronous quadrature phase-shift keying transmission with distributed feedback lasers at a data rate of 2.8 Gb/s. The tolerance against fast polarization changes and polarization-dependent loss is evaluated for different filter widths in the carrier recovery circuit. The minimum achieved bit-error rate is 3.4 times 10-7.

Pilot-Symbols-Aided Carrier-Phase Recovery for 100-G PM-QPSK Digital Coherent Receivers

This letter presents a hardware-efficient frequency estimator and an advanced phase estimation algorithm capable of tracking the phase noise of a 10-GBaud optical quadrature phase-shift-keying transmission system with standard distributed-feedback lasers in the presence of a frequency mismatch up to 1.2 GHz. This algorithm allows us to implement a digital coherent receiver without an analog frequency control circuit.

Coherent Digital Polarization Diversity Receiver for Real-Time Polarization-Multiplexed QPSK Transmission at 2.8 Gb/s

This letter presents a hardware-efficient phase estimation algorithm that can replace the common complex estimators for a coherent quadrature phase-shift keying transmission system.

Frequency and Phase Estimation for Coherent QPSK Transmission With Unlocked DFB Lasers

Polarization-switched quadrature phase-shift keying (PS-QPSK) is a recently introduced 4-D signal constellation that has a power efficiency (and sensitivity) advantage over polarization-division multiplexed QPSK (PDM-QPSK). Using a polarization-rotated form of PS-QPSK, we show that it is equivalent to a short block code, and assert that basic information theory explains its advantage over PDM-QPSK. We consider the practicality of PS-QPSK by considering its performance after a forward error correction (FEC) is applied, as this is the true measure of a modulation formats power efficiency. When fairly compared with the same data rate, bandwidth, and transmit power, simulations show that PS-QPSK is actually not as efficient as PDM-QPSK when a sufficient FEC is applied to achieve the very low BERs required in practice.

Multiplier-Free Real-Time Phase Tracking for Coherent QPSK Receivers

A digital polarization control system integrated in a 2.8 Gbit/s realtime polarization-multiplexed coherent QPSK system compensates for endless polarization changes having a maximum gradient of 3.5 krad/s (12 krad/s) with 1 dB (3.9 dB) loss in receiver sensitivity.