ABSTRACT
Symbol synchronization constitutes a major component in optical OFDM transceivers. In this paper, we propose reducing the complexity of a blind symbol synchronization technique for direct detection OFDM receivers based on virtual subcarriers by optimizing the number and location of the virtual subcarriers. Compared to the system design in our previous study, this new technique offers a reduction of 92% in the number of virtual subcarriers (from 26 to 2 in a system with 50 data carrying subchannels) resulting in significant savings in complexity with a minimal penalty. Moreover, it offers an increase in the system capacity as more subcarriers can be used to transmit data. The technique was assessed experimentally using a transmission system of direct detection 16-QAM optical OFDM operating at a data rate of 30.65 Gb/s over 23.3 km SSMF with BER of 10(-3). Negligible penalty was observed at high received powers. However, at low received powers, the number of averaging symbols had to be increased in order to improve the robustness of the method.
ABSTRACT
The use of single-sideband subcarrier modulation (SCM) with Nyquist (N) pulse shaping for cost-effective spectrally-efficient wavelength division multiplexed transmission with direct detection is described. Transmission of digitally pre-compensated 7 × 11 GHz-spaced QPSK SCM channels at 14 Gb/s per channel is experimentally demonstrated over distances of up to 800 km of uncompensated standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) (13440 ps/nm chromatic dispersion).
ABSTRACT
The paper investigates the performance of a blind symbol synchronisation technique for optical OFDM systems based on virtual subcarriers. The test-bed includes a real-time 16-QAM OFDM transmitter operating at a net data rate of 30.65 Gb/s using a single OFDM band with a single FPGA-DAC subsystem and demonstrates transmission over 23.3 km SSMF with direct detection at a BER of 10(-3). By comparing the performance of the proposed synchronisation scheme with that of the Schmidl and Cox algorithm, it was found that the two approaches achieve similar performance for large numbers of averaging symbols, but the performance of the proposed scheme degrades as the number of averaging symbols is reduced. The proposed technique has lower complexity and bandwidth overhead as it does not rely on training sequences. Consequently, it is suitable for implementation in high speed optical OFDM transceivers.
ABSTRACT
We investigate the performance and DSP resource requirements of digitally generated OFDM and sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses. The two multiplexing techniques are of interest as they offer highest spectral efficiency. The comparison aims at determining which technology performs better with limited processing capacities of state-of-the-art FPGAs. It is shown that a novel Nyquist pulse shaping technique, based on look-up tables requires lower resource count than equivalent IFFT-based OFDM signal generation while achieving similar performance with low inter-channel guard-bands in ultra-dense WDM. Our findings are based on a resource assessment of selected DSP implementations in terms of both simulations and experimental validations. The experiments were performed with real-time software-defined transmitters using a single or three optical carriers.
