Coded Modulation in Optical Communications

Henning Blow
1,2
and Ekaterina Masalkina
1

1) University Erlangen-Nuernberg, Information Transmission, Cauerstr. 7, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany
2) Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs, Lorenzstrasse 10, D-70435 Stuttgart, Germany
henning.buelow@alcatel-lucent.com


Abstract: Coded modulation schemes for optical transport are reviewed and coding of 4-D
constellations is discussed including iterative demapping for soft-detection of polarization-
switched QPSK which achieves 1.5dB sensitivity gain compared to polarization-multiplexed
QPSK.
2011 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (060.2330) Fiber optics communications, (060.4080) Modulation

1. Introduction
Less than a decade ago, the increasing demand for fiber capacity was met by increasing the channel rate of binary
modulated transmission systems: from 2.5 to 10 and then to 40 Gbit/s. The inevitable loss of sensitivity was
mitigated by channel coding using hard-decision FEC [1] applied at the digital channel, i.e. the bits before
modulation and after decision. But when moving to 40 Gbit/s channels in a 50-GHz DWDM grid, engineers became
aware of the limited spectral width even of the optical channel. Moreover, todays exhaust of total fiber capacity in
some of the installed links put our attention on the fact that the total spectrum offered by fiber is a scarce resource.
Hence investigation in techniques increasing spectral efficiency was fostered, leading to (D)QPSK modulation,
polarization-division multiplexing (PDM) and multi-level modulation such as 16-QAM. Not surprisingly
researchers started to adopt schemes from classical communications such as coded modulation schemes which
overcome the separation of coding and modulation and allow pushing systems closer to the Shannon limit.
In this paper we shortly review coded modulation concepts which have been applied to optics, i.e. trellis coded
modulation (TCM) and bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) and discuss the application of coding at 4-
dimensional optimized constellations including iterative demapping joint with soft-detected low-density parity
check-code (LDPC) channel coding.

2. Trellis coded modulation (TCM)
In 2004 the application of TCM for optical systems was proposed [2] and in the following years different groups
analyzed its performance [2-7]. The basic idea of TCM, which was invented by Ungerboeck [8] for voice band
channel application, is to produce space for code check bits without increasing the bandwidth (symbol rate) by
expanding the constellation points by a factor of 2 to 2M. The L+1 bits mapped to the constellation points allow to
apply a convolutional code with an overhead (OH) of 1/L (see Fig. 1). Even though the lower Euclidian distance of
the 2M constellation points lead to a strong increase of the error rate, the distance between symbol sequences is
increased due to constraints introduced by the code and enables a Viterbi decoder to correlates out the most likely
symbol sequence. The mapping between L+1 bits to 2M constellation points is carefully chosen by set
partitioning. Recently, TCM was proposed as inner FEC in a coding scheme applied at the subcarrier of a
polarization multiplexed (PDM) coherent optical OFDM system. Lab tests by Q. Yang and co-workers
demonstrated 1-Tbit/s transport with TCM on a 8-PSK [9] whereas Xiang Liu and co-workers demonstrated 44-
Gbit/s transmission with TCM on 32-QAM subcarriers [10]. In these two experiments the inner TCM improved the
coding gain by 2.6 dB and 1.2 dB against enhanced FEC (7% OH) coded QPSK and 16-QAM, respectively.
Multilevel coding (MLC), a further coding schemes similar to TCM [11], has never been discussed in-deep for
optics. It applies codes of different strength on different bits of the constellation.
m
a
p
p
e
r
m
o
d
u
l
a
t
o
r
convolutional
encoder
opt.
channel r
e
c
e
i
v
e
r
/
d
e
m
a
p
p
e
r
Viterbi
decoder

FEC
encoder
map.
mapper
/modulator
de-
map.
optical
channel
IL
-1
IL
inter-
leaver
FEC
decoder
deinter-
leaver
receiver/
de-mapper

Fig. 1 Trellis coded modulation TCM. Fig. 2 Bit interleaved coded modulation BICM.

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2. Bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM)
With todays bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) [1, 12] we are nearly back to the coding scheme of the
early days: the constraints between constellation size, mapping, code choice, and OH are relaxed by connecting any
coder to the mapper. Only an interleaver (IL) is inserted between both (see Fig. 2). In BICM, opposite to TCM,
error-prone bits or error bursts are not concentrated and individually protected by a code, but distributed along the
code word. Specifically soft-detected LDPC coding was deeply investigated by two teams around Mizuochi [13]
and around Djordjevic [12, 14], respectively, for direct and corherent detection, single carrier and multi carrier
systems [15], including DSP processing optimization and realization aspects for 100 Gbit/s [16]. With 20% OH net
coding gain beyond 10 dB at BER of 10
-13
seems possible.

2. Hard-decision of 4D optimized constellations
Already in the early nineties a few teams have taken the 4-dimensional (4-D) signal space characteristics of the
optical field (in-phase and quadrature of x and y polarization) into account by introducing 4-D constellation space
[17-18] and discussing polarization shift keying (PolSK). In recent time Djordjevic and co-workers looked at PolSK
and soft LDPC decoding joint with Turbo equalization [19]. Karlsson and Agrell left Stokes space of PolSK
constellations and showed in a systematic analysis that certain constellations optimized in 4-D space are superior to
conventional PDM constellations in terms of sensitivity [20-22].
Next, we will analyze whether the advantage of the 4-D optimized formats remains visible in the low OSNR
regime where FEC supported systems commonly operate. We will look at two 4-D formats, namely polarization
switched QPSK (PS-QPSK) [20], also named HEXA [23], and POL-QAM 6-4 [22]. We will refer to these two
formats by 2 or 6 PolSK-QPSK, respectively, since both can be described by 2 or 6 level PolSK succeeded by a
QPSK stage.
RS
(511,455)
inner FEC
encoder
eFEC 7%
outer FEC
encoder
inner FEC
decoder
eFEC 7%
outer FEC
decoder
4D-
map.
mapper
/modulator
de-
map.
receiver/
de-mapper
RS
(511,455)
optical
channel

Fig. 3 Hard-decision BICM scheme for optimized 4-D constellations
with inner RS code synchronized with symbols.

1.E-04
1.E-03
1.E-02
1.E-01
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
OSNR[dB]
B
E
R
PDM-QPSK
2PolSK-QPSK
6PolSK-QPSK
+RS12% uncoded
28 25 Gbaud 42G 28G 37G
1.E-04
1.E-03
1.E-02
1.E-01
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
OSNR[dB]
B
E
R
PDM-QPSK
2PolSK-QPSK
6PolSK-QPSK
+RS12% uncoded
28 25 Gbaud 42G 28G 37G


Fig. 4 BER vs. OSNR for 112-Gbit/s modulation:
Dashed line: PDM-QPSK/BPSK;
Boxes: 6PolSK-QPSK; Diamonds: 2PolSK-QPSK.
Horizontal arrows: Improvement from eFEC to concatenated 20% FEC.
In Fig. 4 the simulated BER vs. OSNR curves for 112 Gbit/s transmission reveal the basic performance of
6PolSK-QPSK (boxes) and 2PolSK-QPSK (diamonds) in comparison to standard PDM-QPSK (dashed line). For
hard-decision coding by enhance FEC (eFEC) with 7% OH and 210
-3
BER threshold (arrows), 6PolSK (boxes)
exhibits the lowest symbol rate of 25 Gbaud (labels at respective curves) due to its higher spectral efficiency of
4.5 bit/symbol, but still suffers from a slight 0.2-dB penalty compared to 28 Gbaud PDM-QPSK (dashed curve),
mainly due to error bursts within a symbol coming from its anti-Gray mapping. The 1.8-dB advantage of 2PolSK-
QPSK (diamonds) at low BER [20, 23] shrinks to 1 dB at eFEC limit (arrow).
An additional inner RS(511,455) FEC with 12.5% OH (see Fig. 3) increase the total OH of from 7% to 20% and
leads to a significant 1.5-dB gain (arrows in Fig. 4), provided (i) the (de-)interleaver (see Fig. 2) is omitted or
replaced by an interleaver on symbol basis rather than on bit basis and (ii) the signal symbols and RS symbols are
synchronized, i.e. the bits belonging to a signal symbol are mapped into only one RS symbol. This means that three
2PolSK-QPSK symbols or one supersymbol of the 6PolSK-QPSK [22] form one 9-bit RS symbol of the inner code.

3. Soft-decision and iterative demapping of 4D constellations
If we want to take advantage of the additional gain of soft-decoding for Gray-mapped signals (PDM-QPSK), the
BICM scheme of Fig. 2 with a soft-out demapper providing log-likelihood-ratios (LLR) for a soft-in LDPC decoder
is optimum. With an outer RS(992,956) code with a 3.8% OH, the inner irregular LDPCs (9252 bits code word,
16% OH) errors below 2.710
-4
are removed [13, 16]. This code concatenation with 20% OH achieves about 10.5-
dB net coding gain at 10
-13
. This corresponds to an OSNR sensitivity improvement of about 2.7 dB with respect to
hard-decision eFEC, as illustrated by the upper horizontal arrow in Fig. 6. The arrow points at the BER threshold of
the outer RS (2.710
-4
) at the LDPC coded PDM-QPSK curve (black line).
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If we want to apply soft decoding for 2PolSK-QPSK, this scheme is not optimum any more due to anti-Gray
mapping of this 4-D constellation. A soft decoding scheme which takes into account anti-Gray mapped symbol is
iterative demapping. It was proposed by ten Brink [24], successfully applied to anti-Gray mapped optical OFDM
subcarriers by Lotz [25] and recently also investigated for specific 4-D constellations by Batshon [26]. As sketched
out in Fig. 6, its core element is a soft-out demapper with two inputs. At one input the received signal sample z is
applied and at the other input LLRs of a priori values of the bits forming the actual symbol z. The demapper
outputs LLRs of these bits (a posteriori probability). In a turbo like scheme the input LLRs are iteratively updated
(outer iteration) by extrinsic LLR output values provided by the FEC decoder.
The lower horizontal arrow in Fig. 6 shows the improvement which we can be obtained by applying iterative
demapping (ID) to 2PolSK-QPSK. Its length confirms a gain of 3.2 dB against eFEC. With this gain (lower arrow
in Fig. 6) the sensitivity of soft-decoded PDM-QPSK (upper arrow) is exceeded by 1.5 dB.
4D
de-
map
IL
-1
LDPC
received
4D symbol
a priori
bit LLR
IL
RS
extr.
a posteriori bit LLR
outer FEC dec. inner FEC dec.
soft-out demapper

Fig. 5 Iterative demapper is formed by soft-out demapper for 4-
D symbols z and LDPC decoder.

Fig. 6 BER vs. OSNR for 112-Gbit/s modulation:
Black: PDM-QPSK/BPSK; Diamonds: 2PolSK-QPSK.
Horizontal arrows: Improvement from eFEC to 20% soft-FEC
(LDPC + RS)
1.E-05
1.E-04
1.E-03
1.E-02
1.E-01
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
OSNR [dB]
B
E
R
PDM-QPSK
2PolSK-QPSK
+LDPC 16%
37G 28Gbaud
+ iter.
demap.
42G 32G
uncoded
1.E-05
1.E-04
1.E-03
1.E-02
1.E-01
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
OSNR [dB]
B
E
R
PDM-QPSK
2PolSK-QPSK
+LDPC 16%
37G 28Gbaud
+ iter.
demap.
42G 32G
uncoded


4. Conclusion
After having revisited principles and results on the application of trellis coded modulation and bit interleaved
coded modulation at high bit-rate optical transmission, the performance gain for modulation with 4-dimensional (4-
D) optimized constellations joint with coding was numerically investigated. Polarization-switched QPSK (2PolSK-
QPSK) and 6PolSK-QPSK require modified coding schemes due to anti-Gray mapping. I.e. symbol synchronization
for hard-decision RS coding and iterative demapping (ID) for soft-decision LDPC coding. With respect to enhanced
FEC sensitivity, the improvement of soft-decision can be higher for 4-D optimized constellations than for
polarization multiplexed (PDM) QPSK, leading to a sensitivity gain of 1.5 dB for 2PolSK-QPSK compared to
PDM-QPSK.
We thank W. Sauer-Greff and S. ten Brink for helpful discussions on coding and demapping.
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