Abstract

Directly modulated laser (DML) and direct detection (DD) based pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) for short reach optical communications has attracted lots of research interests due to its low cost and simple configuration. However, the directly modulated PAM signal usually suffers from distortions after the transmission over a dispersion uncompensated link. Due to the adiabatic chirp of the DML working in a high output power region, different intensity levels of the PAM signal correspond to different frequency offsets, thus resulting in amplitude-dependent skew after the transmission over a dispersion uncompensated link. It will degrade signal quality and limit transmission distance. In this article, we, for the first time, propose a computational efficient piecewise linear (PWL) equalizer to correct the amplitude-dependent skew due to the interaction between the DML chirp and chromatic dispersion in the fiber. By using the PWL equalizer, the amplitude-dependent skew is corrected, and we successfully transmit 56 Gb/s PAM-4 signal over 40 km and 84 Gb/s PAM-4 signal over 20 km dispersion uncompensated link in the C band, with a bit error ratio (BER) below the HD-FEC threshold (3.8 × 10^{− 3}). To demonstrate the low computational complexity of the PWL, we compare its complexity with 2nd order Volterra equalizer for a similar BER performance. The results show that the computational complexity can be reduced by 61.4% and 40.4% for the 56 Gb/s and 84 Gb/s PAM-4 signal transmission, respectively.

Computationally efficient 104 Gb/s PWL-Volterra equalized 2D-TCM-PAM8 in dispersion unmanaged DML-DD system

Yan Fu, Deming Kong, Meihua Bi, Haiyun Xin, Shi Jia, Kuo Zhang, Weisheng Hu, and Hao Hu
Opt. Express 28(5) 7070-7079 (2020)

Intensity directed equalizer for the mitigation of DML chirp induced distortion in dispersion-unmanaged C-band PAM transmission

Kuo Zhang, Qunbi Zhuge, Haiyun Xin, Mohamed Morsy-Osman, Eslam El-Fiky, Lilin Yi, Weisheng Hu, and David V. Plant
Opt. Express 25(23) 28123-28135 (2017)

Transmission of 2 × 56  Gb/s PAM-4 signal over 100  km SSMF using 18  GHz DMLs

Shiwei Zhou, Xiang Li, Lilin Yi, Qi Yang, and Songnian Fu
Opt. Lett. 41(8) 1805-1808 (2016)

Performance comparison of DML, EML and MZM in dispersion-unmanaged short reach transmissions with digital signal processing

Kuo Zhang, Qunbi Zhuge, Haiyun Xin, Weisheng Hu, and David V. Plant
Opt. Express 26(26) 34288-34304 (2018)

C-band 120-Gb/s PAM-4 transmissions over a 100-km dispersion-uncompensated SSMF using joint combined pulse shaping and low-complexity nonlinear equalization

Xiong Wu, Junwei Zhang, Alan Pak Tao Lau, and Chao Lu
Opt. Lett. 47(19) 5144-5147 (2022)