Nyquist four-level pulse amplitude modulation scheme (PAM-4) based on hierarchical modulation in IM/DD-TDM PON with hybrid equalization

Abstract

In order to achieve higher power margin in the intensity-modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) based time division multiplexed passive optical network (TDM-PON) system, at the optical line terminal (OLT) side, we propose to use a Nyquist pulse shaped four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) by using the electric low pass filter(LPF). In addition, we apply the hierarchical modulation (HM) scheme by assigning of most-significant bits (MSBs) and the less-significant bits (LSBs) of the PAM-4 symbol to optical network units (ONUs) located at different link positions. In addition, an overlap frequency domain equalizer (OFDE) and a vestigial-side band (VSB) filter are used to mitigate the linear inter symbol interference (ISI) and power fading (both of which are incurred by chromatic dispersion (CD)), respectively. The system performance, i.e., bit error rate (BER) and receiver sensitivity for both MSB and LSB, are analyzed by varying different system configurations. Simulation results show that increasing the hierarchical power ratio, which determines the significance difference between the points in the Nyquist pulse shaped HM PAM-4 constellation diagram, can increase the MSB’s receiver sensitivity and reduce the LSB’s receiver sensitivity. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the electric low pass filter can reduce the system ISI. In addition, the effect of linear ISI and power fading can be migrated by utilizing OFDE and VSB filter, respectively.