In this Letter, we propose and demonstrate a 4 × 4 differential index modulation (DIM) scheme for optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OOFDM) systems. The 4 × 4 DIM scheme avoids complex channel estimation by performing differential index modulation in the time-frequency domain, with the key aspect lying in the design of the time-frequency dispersion matrix that integrates the indices and constellation symbols. Moreover, we design a deep learning-based DIMFormer detector for the high decoding complexity problem of maximum likelihood (ML) detection. Experimental results show that the 4 × 4 DIM in OOFDM systems eliminates the need for complex channel estimation, and the loss of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is no more than 1 dB compared to conventional index modulation. The designed DIMFormer detector reduces the computational complexity by 38.98% as well as the time complexity by 99% compared to ML.
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