Forward Error Correction Limit Research Articles

Flickering-Free Distance-Independent Modulation Scheme for OCC

Communications for IoT sensor networks in Smart City applications are demanding new technologies to avoid the radio frequency spectrum saturation and support the massive nodes situation required in this kind of network. Visible Light Communications are gaining interest as an alternative scheme for solving this problem. In particular, Optical Camera Communication (OCC) takes advantage of the presence of cameras in a wide range of devices (smartphones, surveillance systems). Several transmission and modulation schemes, specifically developed for OCC, have been proposed but they present different problems as the communication range, the flickering effects in the transmitted signal, or the system complexity. In this work, an Optical Camera Communication modulation scheme that addresses the considerable variability of the transmitter–receiver distance is proposed. As will be shown, the modulation scheme works properly independently of this separation for a wide range of distances. Additionally, it performs a flickering free transmission to avoid undesired blinking effects for humans and uses a simplified transmission and reception scheme, reducing the system complexity and cost. Results of the modulation’s performance for short (<20 m), medium (20–60 m), and long (>60 m) ranges are presented in the paper, showing a 16 bps transmission rate with Bit Error Rate below the Forward Error Correction (FEC) limit (3.8 · 10−3).

4.0 Gbps visible light communication in a foggy environment based on a blue laser diode.

Fog has a strong attenuation effect on the optical channel, which will greatly degrade the performance of visible light communication (VLC). Studying the effect of the fog on communication performance is crucial to realize outdoor VLC for next generation networks, but there is little research on this topic. In this work, the transmission characteristics of visible light band in the foggy channel were measured and a high-speed VLC system based on a 450 nm blue laser diode (LD) and 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (16-QAM-OFDM) in the artificial fog environment was demonstrated experimentally. Through a foggy channel of 60 cm, a maximum data rate of up to 4 Gbps was achieved at the pass loss of 13.06 dB with a bit error rate (BER) of 3.5 × 10-3 below the forward error correction (FEC) limit (3.8 × 10-3), which was the highest data rate ever reported for VLC in the foggy channel. Even at a higher pass loss of 17.32 dB, the proposed system still could achieve a data rate of 2.84 Gbps with a BER of 2.8 × 10-3. Further extending the distance to 16.9 m for a more practical application, a data rate of 2.0 Gbps was also demonstrated successfully.

Tunable multiwavelength optical comb enabledRoF‐OFDM‐PONwith wavelength multiplex

AbstractWe propose a hybrid full duplex passive optical network with fusion of wavelength‐division‐multiplexing and orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing (WDM‐OFDM) for a radio‐over‐fiber (RoF) system application. The key of the system is a tunable optical frequency comb (OFC) embedded cascading modulators and a parameter mixer. Moreover, 23 frequency components with 0.6 dB flatness generated by the OFC are used as light sources for each WDM channel. We utilize a 7.5 GHz OFDM wired signal and a 12.5 GHz OFDM wireless signal for downstream transmission and 10 Gb/s OOK (on–off keyed) signals for upstream traffic. Using polarization multiplexing technique, we extract a central optical carrier to bear the upstream signal so that no excess optical source is introduced into the ONU. Thus, the intricacy and costs of system are diminished. Moreover, successful transmission has been demonstrated since the bit error rates of the downstream and upstream signals are always under the adopted forward error correction limit. Furthermore, the proposed system can enhance power budget and reduce cost, which has a promising prospect for future wireless communication.

The Utilization of Artificial Neural Network Equalizer in Optical Camera Communications.

In this paper, we propose and validate an artificial neural network-based equalizer for the constant power 4-level pulse amplitude modulation in an optical camera communications system. We introduce new terminology to measure the quality of the communications link in terms of the number of row pixels per symbol , which allows a fair comparison considering the progress made in the development of the current image sensors in terms of the frame rates and the resolutions of each frame. Using the proposed equalizer, we experimentally demonstrate a non-flickering system using a single light-emitting diode (LED) with of 20 and 30 pixels/symbol for the unequalized and equalized systems, respectively. Potential transmission rates of up to 18.6 and 24.4 kbps are achieved with and without the equalization, respectively. The quality of the received signal is assessed using the eye-diagram opening and its linearity and the bit error rate performance. An acceptable bit error rate (below the forward error correction limit) and an improvement of ~66% in the eye linearity are achieved using a single LED and a typical commercial camera with equalization.

Self restorable intra data center interconnect based on multimode fiber and free-space optics

We demonstrate a high data rate and low-cost OM4 multimode fiber (MMF) and free-space optics (FSO)-based self-restorable 2 × 100 Gbps per wavelength intra data center interconnect between two pairs of servers. This transmission system is based on two vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers that are directly modulated with PAM-4 data at the rate of 100 Gbps and multiplexed using mode division multiplexing of two linearly polarized modes. In case a fault occurs in the MMF-based primary path, the traffic is shifted to FSO-based protection path through a specially designed triggering and switching mechanism. Offline digital signal processing is used at the receiver to process the received PAM-4 signal for compensating the effects of channel impairments. The performance of the proposed architecture is evaluated at link lengths of 35 and 70 m under normal and faulty scenarios. The effect of varying the refractive index structure parameter of the log-normal channel model and the effect of mode coupling between linearly polarized (LP) modes on the bit-error-rate performance is also analyzed under different conditions. We observe that the performance of the FSO-based protection path is better than the OM4-based primary path at a forward error correction limit of 3.8 × 10 − 3 bit-error-rate.

Beam steering in a narrow-beam phosphor down-converted white light visible light communication link using transmitter lens decentering.

Indoor visible light communication (VLC) systems with narrow beams can achieve practical few-meters-long wireless optical links. Such links can operate at low power levels and high data rate for supporting point-to-point or multipoint communication. The narrow-beam VLC links can, however, benefit from beam steering to support mobility of user equipment and cater to multiple users. Simple beam-steering techniques with minimal changes to the existing optical hardware are required to enable widespread adoption of beam steering in VLC links. We study the performance of a simple transmitter-lens-decenter-based beam-steering scheme in a VLC link, utilizing a phosphor down-converted blue laser transmitter. The beam-steering angle and hence the receiver coverage depend on the transmitter lens decenter and the choice of the transmitter and receiver lens's focal lengths. Optical ray tracing is used to quantify the collection efficiency achievable with beam steering, choose a suitable receiver lens, and understand the role of off-axis aberration in the system performance. In our experimental implementation, the transmitter lens decentering technique results in a maximum steering angle of 7.1°. This corresponds to a receiver coverage of 30 cm per cm of transmitter lens decenter for a fixed link length of 300 cm. The measured on-axis white light color coordinates of (0.286, 0.253) is found to shift toward warmer white colors with beam steering. The on-axis illuminance level of ∼19lux decreases slightly with beam steering and is found to be below the maximum permissible exposure limit for indoor illumination. We also quantify the data communication performance as a function of beam steering using on-off modulated data. Bit-error rates below the forward error correction limit are obtained for receiver coverage diameter of 75 cm and 60 cm for 1.25 Gbps and 1.5 Gbps data rates, respectively.

Iterative Pairwise Maximum Likelihood Receiver for ACO-OFDM in Visible Light Communications

An iterative pairwise maximum likelihood (ML) receiver is proposed for asymmetrically clipped optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM) in visible light communications (VLC). With the aid of the pairwise ML detection, half of the received ACO-OFDM samples are forced to zero in time domain. However, when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is low, the pairwise ML detection may cause misjudgment. With the iterative pairwise ML detection, the ACO-OFDM symbols are detected in frequency domain and the SNR gain of 3 dB could be available. Simulation results show that the pairwise ML receiver without iteration provides the SNR improvement of 1.5~2.7 dB for 7% forward error correction (FEC) limit. The proposed iterative receiver gives a SNR gain of 2.6~2.9 dB with 7% FEC limit.

Real-time high-bandwidth mm-wave 5G NR signal transmission with analog radio-over-fiber fronthaul over multi-core fiber

This article presents an experimental demonstration of a high-capacity millimeter-wave 5G NR signal transmission with analog radio-over-fiber (ARoF) fronthaul over multi-core fiber and full real-time processing. The demonstration validates the core of the blueSPACE fronthaul architecture which combines ARoF fronthaul with space division multiplexing in the optical distribution network to alleviate the fronthaul capacity bottleneck and maintain a centralized radio access network with fully centralized signal processing. The introduction of optical beamforming in the blueSPACE architecture brings true multi-beam transmission and enables full spatial control over the RF signal. The proposed ARoF architecture features a transmitter that generates the ARoF signal and an optical signal carrying a reference local oscillator employed for downconversion at the remote unit from a single RF reference at the central office. A space division multiplexing based radio access network with multi-core fibre allows parallel transport of the uplink ARoF signal and reference local oscillator at the same wavelength over separate cores. A complete description of the real-time signal processing and experimental setup is provided and system performance is evaluated. Transmission of an 800 MHz wide extended 5G NR fronthaul signal over a 7-core fibre is shown with full real-time signal processing, achieving 1.4 Gbit/s with a bit error rate <3.8times 10^{-3} and thus below the limit for hard-decision forward error correction with 7% overhead.

High-Speed DD Transmission Using a Silicon Receiver Co-Integrated With a 28-nm CMOS Gain-Tunable Fully-Differential TIA

We report >100-Gb/s direct-detection (DD) transmission using an integrated silicon optical receiver, which comprised a fully-differential 28-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transimpedance amplifier (TIA) wire-bonded to a Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) balanced photodiode (PD). The fully-differential TIA architecture enabled significant bit-error-rate (BER) and signal-to-noise ratio improvements over a single-output TIA design when introducing it to the DD transmission. We experimentally validated its effectiveness in both back-to-back (B2B) and 2-km long standard single-mode fibre (SSMF) links using 50/100-Gb/s signals, including Nyquist on-off keying (OOK), Nyquist 4-ary pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4), uniformly-loaded DD optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DDO-OFDM) and adaptively-loaded DDO-OFDM. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the integrated optical receiver was capable of balancing the trade-off between its electrical bandwidth and transimpedance gain by simply adjusting a voltage supply to the TIA. Without the need for optical amplification and while keeping the BERs below the 7% forward error correction limit, up to 173.22-Gb/s and 139.86-Gb/s adaptively-loaded DDO-OFDM transmission was achieved for B2B and 2-km transmission, respectively. The demonstrated results highlight the potential of the integrated silicon optical receiver, fabricated using the standard CMOS process for high-speed and short-reach optical interconnects.

Bi-directional gated recurrent unit neural network based nonlinear equalizer for coherent optical communication system

We propose a bi-directional gated recurrent unit neural network based nonlinear equalizer (bi-GRU NLE) for coherent optical communication systems. The performance of bi-GRU NLE has been experimentally demonstrated in a 120 Gb/s 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (64-QAM) coherent optical communication system with a transmission distance of 375 km. Experimental results show that the proposed bi-GRU NLE can significantly mitigate nonlinear distortions. The Q-factors can exceed the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit of 8.52 dB with the aid of bi-GRU NLE, when the launched optical power is in the range of -3 dBm to 3 dBm. In addition, when the launched optical power is in the range of 0 dBm to 2 dBm, the Q-factor performances of the bi-GRU NLE and bi-directional long short-term memory neural network based nonlinear equalizer (bi-LSTM NLE) are similar, while the number of parameters of bi-GRU NLE is about 20.2% less than that of bi-LSTM NLE, the average training time of bi-GRU NLE is shorter than that of bi-LSTM NLE, the number of multiplications required for the bi-GRU NLE to equalize per symbol is about 24.5% less than that for bi-LSTM NLE.

Soft-Demapping for Short Reach Optical Communication: A Comparison of Deep Neural Networks and Volterra Series

In optical fiber communication, optical and electrical components introduce nonlinearities, which require effective compensation to attain highest data rates. In particular, in short reach communication, components are the dominant source of nonlinearities. Volterra series are a popular countermeasure for receiver-side equalization of nonlinear component impairments and their memory effects. However, Volterra equalizer architectures are generally very complex. This article investigates soft deep neural network (DNN) architectures as an alternative for nonlinear equalization and soft-decision demapping. On coherent 92GBd dual polarization 64QAM back-to-back measurements performance and complexity is experimentally evaluated. The proposed bit-wise soft DNN equalizer (SDNNE) is compared to a 5th order Volterra equalizer at a 15% overhead forward error correction (FEC) limit. At equal performance, the computational complexity is reduced by 65%. At equal complexity, the performance is improved by 0.35 dB gain in optical signal-to-noise-ratio (OSNR).

Out-of-band pilot-tone-based SOP tracking in polarization diversity optical access network transmission

A polarization diversity-based PON system can be an attractive network solution for the future PON system that requires high data capacity with both a large number of subscribers and longer transmission-reach. However, the state-of-polarization (SOP) inevitably rotates during the transmission through the single-mode fiber (SMF). Therefore, this system cannot ensure high data capacity owing to the SOP rotation. In this paper, we propose the out-of-band pilot-aided SOP rotation tracking technique for in the polarization diversity-based PON transmission system. The proposed technique tracks the SOP rotation by measuring the variance of the power ratio of the inserted pilot-tone at the reference polarization axis. This technique offers the advantages of a low overhead and dynamic update for SOP variation; further, it is optical control-free and transparent for data format. For the experimental demonstration of the SOP rotation compensation, the pilot insertion was firstly optimized and the correctable range of the SOP rotation was analyzed. The results of the emulation of the uplink transmission indicated that the SNR at both polarization axes could be successfully retained by compensating the SOP rotation. Under the target forward error correction limit, the SE up to 8 bit/s/Hz within single-wavelength was obtained for 60 km PON transmission.

Hybrid frequency domain aided temporal convolutional neural network with low network complexity utilized in UVLC system.

Deep neural network has been used to compensate the nonlinear distortion in the field of underwater visible light communication (UVLC) system. Considering the tradeoff between the equalization performance and the network complexity is the priority in practical applications. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid frequency domain aided temporal convolutional neural network (TFCNN) with attention scheme as the post-equalizer in CAP modulated UVLC system. Experiments illustrate that the proposed TFCNN can achieve better equalization performance and remain the bit error rate (BER) below the 7% hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit of 3.8×10-3 when other equalizers loss effectiveness under serious distortion condition. Compared with the standard deep neural network, TFCNN shows 76.4% network parameters complexity reduction.

Experimental Demonstration of Over 14 AL Underwater Wireless Optical Communication

Turbidity of water significantly affect the system performance of underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC). In this letter, we proposed and experimentally demonstrated a loss-tolerant UWOC system using a compact high-power 520-nm laser diode (LD) and a highly sensitive silicon photomultiplier (SiPM). The LD is directly modulated by the on-off keying-non-return-to-zero (OOK-NRZ) data. A precise collimation system is designed in the transmitter so that the maximum beam divergence angle is fixed at 0.75 mrad. The performance of the proposed system is investigated over a 24-m underwater channel with different attenuation lengths (ALs) mimicking the different levels of water turbidity in coastal water. Experimental results show that the data rates of 20 Mbps, 40 Mbps, 80 Mbps and 100 Mbps can be achieved under 14.3 AL, 13.2 AL, 13.2 AL and 12.3 AL with bit error rates (BERs) lower than the forward error correction (FEC) limit.

Processing for dispersive intensity-modulation and direct-detection fiber-optic communications.

In intensity-modulation and direct-detection (IM/DD) fiber-optic communications, it is hard to pre- or post-compensate for chromatic dispersion (CD) by digital signal processing due to one-dimensional modulation and detection. In this Letter, we propose joint optical and digital signal processing to effectively compensate for CD-caused distortions for IM/DD optical systems. As a reasonable optical signal processing, negative chirp based on self-phase modulation can suppress a part of CD to take pressure off digital signal processing. Digital signal processing is designed based on the model of a dispersive channel to accurately compensate for CD-caused distortions. To the best of our knowledge, we present a record C-band 72 Gbit/s optical on-off keying over 100 km dispersion-uncompensated link (i.e., ∼1700ps/nm dispersion), achieving a 7% hard-decision forward error correction limit. We conclude that joint optical and digital signal processing is effective in dealing with CD-caused distortions to achieve a higher capacity-distance product in IM/DD fiber-optic communications.

Cascaded Microwave Photonic Filters for Side Mode Suppression in a Tunable Optoelectronic Oscillator applied to THz Signal Generation &amp; Transmission

We demonstrate experimentally an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) in which high side-mode suppression is achieved by cascading a phase modulator-based single passband tunable microwave photonic (MWP) filter with an optoelectronic feedback loop-based infinite impulse response (IIR) MWP filter. The OEO provides an RF oscillation that can be tuned from 6.5 GHz to 17.8 GHz with a phase noise lower than -103 dBc/Hz. Experimental results show that inclusion of the IIR section leads to a 20 dB reduction of phase noise close to the carrier and an increase of 10 dB in side mode suppression, compared to the equivalent OEO without an IIR section. The OEO was used to drive an optical frequency comb generator to generate a THz signal at 242.6 GHz by optical heterodyning; inclusion of the IIR section increases suppression of the side modes neighboring the THz carrier. A radio over fiber link was then implemented at a 242.6 GHz carrier frequency, with transmission of a 24 Gbps signal over 40 km of fiber and a 30 cm wireless path at a bit error rate below the forward error correction limit. The proposed system may be applied to frequency reconfigurable THz links and radars.

V- and W-band microwave generation and modulation using semiconductor lasers at period-one nonlinear dynamics.

Microwave generation and modulation over the V- and W-bands are investigated using a semiconductor laser subject to both comb-like optical injection and direct modulation. The former not only excites period-one (P1) nonlinear dynamics for tunable microwave generation but also improves the stability and purity of such generated microwaves. The latter upconverts data onto the generated microwaves by superimposing the data effectively only onto the lower oscillation sideband of the P1 dynamics, which prevents the data from dispersion-induced degradation over fiber distribution. As a result, microwaves that are continuously tunable from 40 to 110 GHz with a 3-dB linewidth of less than 1 Hz and with phase noise better than -95dBc/Hz at 10-kHz offset are generated. A bit-error ratio better than the forward error correction limit, 3.8×10-3, is achieved for 12-Gb/s 16-quadrature amplitude modulation data after 25-km fiber distribution.

Laser Phase Noise in Ring Resonator Assisted Direct Detection Data Transmission

We introduce an analytical model describing the statistical and spectral properties of laser phase noise induced intensity noise in ring-resonator-based modulation. The model is validated with single sideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SSB-OFDM) implemented with a silicon photonics resonantly-assisted Mach-Zehnder modulator (RA-MZM). Excellent agreement of experimental data with full link simulations, in which phase noise conversion is treated with the analytical model, confirms its validity. Moreover, we demonstrate 30 Gb/s raw data rate transmission with SSB-OFDM over 20 km of single-mode fiber with a bit error ratio below the 20% forward error correction (FEC) limit for three independently run channels of the RA-MZM, each supplied with off-the-shelf 1 MHz linewidth distributed feedback lasers.

Polarization Multiplexed Optical OFDM System With a Beat Interference Cancellation Receiver

A novel beat interference cancellation receiver (BICR) is proposed to cancel the signal-signal beat interference (SSBI) for polarization division multiplexed (PDM) optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OOFDM) system, where two single sideband (SSB) OOFDM signals are polarization multiplexed along with their offset optical carriers (OCs) located at opposite sides. At receiver, the PDM SSB-OOFDM signal is equally power split into four beams with one or two OCs filtered out, and then fed into two balanced photodiode pairs for recovering the RF-OFDM signals with SSBI cancellation. The PDM SSB-OOFDM system is insensitive to fiber polarization mode dispersion since the proposed BICR is implemented without polarization-sensitive devices. Moreover, the spectral efficiency is greatly improved because of PDM and the small guard band since the SSBIs are eliminated. The proposed BICR scheme is validated with a simulation link of 112 Gbps 16-QAM PDM SSB-OOFDM signals. After 120km SSMF transmission, the EVM keeps below forward error correction limit of 16.3%.

56 Gbit/s OOK Signal in C-band Over 20 km Dispersion-Uncompensated Link Transmission With Receiver-Side EDC Algorithm

In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a receiver-side electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) algorithm for direct-detection 56 Gbit/s on-off keying signal in C-band over 20 km dispersion-uncompensated standard single-mode fiber transmission. The proposed receiver-side EDC algorithm includes the feed-forward equalizer, post noise-whitening filter and modified iterative detection algorithm, which is originally used in spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing systems for inter-carrier interference cancellation. Only with the aid of the proposed EDC algorithm for the compensation of power fading effect caused by bandwidth limit and chromatic dispersion, bit-error ratio below the 7% hard-decision forward error correction limit is achieved. This scheme can keep the system cost-effective and flexible, showing potentials for optical interconnects.