Intensity modulation and direct detection Alamouti polarization-time coding for optical fiber transmission systems with polarization mode dispersion

Abstract

Alamouti space-time coding is modified in the form of polarization-time coding to combat against polarization mode dispersion (PMD) impairments in exploiting a polarization diversity multiplex (PDM) gain with simple intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) in optical transmission systems. A theoretical model for the proposed IM/DD Alamouti polarization-time coding (APTC-IM/DD) using nonreturn-to-zero on-off keying signal can surprisingly eliminate the requirement of channel estimation for decoding in the low PMD regime, when a two-transmitter and two-receiver channel is adopted. Even in the high PMD regime, the proposed APTC-IM/DD still reveals coding gain demonstrating the robustness of APTC-IM/DD. In addition, this scheme can eliminate the requirements for a polarization state controller, a coherent receiver, and a high-speed analog-to-digital converter at a receiver. Simulation results reveal that the proposed APTC scheme is able to reduce the optical signal-to-noise ratio requirement by ∼3 dB and significantly enhance the PMD tolerance of a PDM-based IM/DD system.