he proliferation of bandwidth intensive services and

cloud computing has driven the speed of data com-

munication links to higher and higher data rate. The
100 Gb/s bit rate has been standardized, while dis-
cussion has been actively carried out for 400 Gb/s and 1 Tb/s
data links. Although multiple wavelength channels can be
used (e.g., 4 25.8 Gb/s for 100 Gb/s connection) for imple-
menting transceiver modules for such communication sys-
tems, the demand for system integration to reduce system
cost requires the number of wavelengths to be kept to the
minimum. One possible approach to realize this is through
the use of more advanced modulation formats to increase
spectral efficiency by increasing the data rate for a given
transmission system bandwidth. High order modulation for-
mats such as quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), quadra-
ture amplitude modulation (QAM), and orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) with coherent
detection and a digital signaling processing (DSP) algorithm
have been studied extensively in recent years for long haul
optical communication systems. External modulation using
IQ modulators is typically employed at the transmitter, while
at the receiver, optical hybrid and local oscillators together
with DSP algorithms implemented using application-specific
integrated circuits (ASICs) are employed for signal detection.
Dispersion and polarization mode dispersion as well as other
linear impairments can easily be compensated; spectral effi-
ciency as high as 10 b/s/Hz has been achieved, and coherent
transceivers supporting 100 Gb/s per channel using polariza-
tion-multiplexed QPSK are widely available for commercial
deployment. However, for the short to medium term, coher-
ent detection technique is unlikely to be used for short reach
systems. The use of IQ modulator and optical hybrid will not
only increase system cost, but also increase transceiver foot-
print and, as a result, increase the difficulty of system integra-
tion. The complicated coherent detection algorithm will also
significantly increase the power consumption of the transceiv-
er modules, which can be an important concern in short
reach optical communication systems. For short reach com-
munication systems, low-cost light sources such as vertical
cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs), directly modulated
lasers (DMLs), and externally modulated lasers (EMLs) are
likely to be used, and signal will be directly detected at the
optical receiver. As a result, no optical phase information will
be available. Because of these issues, we need to study solu-
tions that can increase system spectral efficiency while using
DML, EML, or VCSEL lasers and direct detection. A num-
ber of schemes have been investigated. These include pulse
amplitude modulation (PAM) [1, 2], carrierless
amplitude/phase modulation (CAP) [35], and direct detect-
ed orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)/dis-
crete multi-tone (DMT) modulation [6, 7]. Performance as
well as power consumption have been studied and compared
[1]. In this article, we review the characteristics of these mod-
ulation schemes for short reach optical communication sys-
tems while highlighting some of the work we have done in
the area.
Pulse Amplitude Modulation Systems
The simplest scheme for increasing data rate without increas-
ing transmission symbol rate is through the use of PAM.
Unlike simple non-return to zero (NRZ) signal, where two sig-
nal levels are used, pulses with multiple signal levels are
employed for signal transmission. If the number of possible
signal levels in a symbol is M and signal transmission speed
(symbol rate) is D, data rate R can be increased by a factor of
log
2
M, and R = Dlog
2
M. Since the bandwidth requirements of
transmitters and receivers are decided by the symbol rate, the
data rate can be increased with low-cost optical components.
However, with the increased number of signal levels, receiver
sensitivity will be reduced. At the same time, with the number
of increased pulse levels, the signal will be more like an analog
signal, and impairments that typically will only affect an analog
optical transmission system such as relative intensity noise
(RIN) and waveform distortion due to limited component
bandwidth will have a more significant effect in such a trans-
mission system. In addition, when the number of levels is dou-
bled, the receiver sensitivity will be reduced by at least 3 dB.
T
6 IEEE Network November/December 2013
Abstract
The use of advanced modulation formats helps to reduce the number of compo-
nents required for short reach optical communication modules at 100 Gb/s and
beyond. Unlike long haul optical communication systems where externally modulat-
ed high order modulation formats with coherent detection receivers are used, direct
modulated lasers with direct detection are likely to be employed for short reach
system implementation. Here we discuss the performance of pulse amplitude modu-
lation, carrierless amplitude/phase modulation, and direct detection orthogonal fre-
quency-division multiplexing for short reach optical communication systems. Their
possible use for future high-capacity short reach optical communication systems is
explored.
Advanced Modulation Formats for Short
Reach Optical Communication Systems
Li Tao, Yu Ji, Jie Liu, Alan Pak Tao Lau, Nan Chi, and Chao Lu
T
0890-8044/13/$25.00 2013 IEEE
LU_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:19 PM Page 6
Trade-off between system performance and number of levels
required will be an important concern in a PAM-based system
if the bandwidth of system components is fixed. To evaluate
the effect of various system parameters on overall system per-
formance, we have simulated the performance of a 25 Gbaud
PAM system using the VPI Transmission Maker. The
schematic diagram of the PAM system is shown in Fig. 1a. The
level encoder will convert a binary data stream into 4-level, 8-
level, and 16-level signals to generate the PAM4, PAM8, and
PAM16 signals. The symbol rate is 25 Gbaud; the data rate
will then be 50 Gb/s, 75 Gb/s, and 100 Gb/s.
We studied system performance with the typical system
component parameters for back-to-back and 3 km fiber link
transmission. For component parameters, we assume an AC
extinction ratio of 10 dB, dark current of 5 nA, RIN of 140
dB/Hz, and receiver TIA equivalent noise input current of 25
pA/

Hz and bandwidth of 20 GHz. The performance is shown

in Fig. 1b.
The results show that under typical system parameters, the
bit error rate (BER) floor has significantly limited the useful-
ness of PAM8 and PAM16 for high-speed signal transmission
systems. In addition, the performance of PAM8 and PAM16
systems will be significantly impacted by relative intensity
noise (RIN) and dispersion, as shown in Figs. 1b and 1c. Due
to the analog nature of the high order PAM signal, other fac-
tors such as transmitter linearity will also have significant
impact on system performance. It is commonly agreed that
modulation formats of higher order than PAM8 will unlikely
be used, and an adaptive equalizer at the receiver for impair-
ment equalization is necessary [1, 2].
Carrierless Amplitude and Phase Modulation
An attractive alternative scheme that may provide good sys-
tem performance using low-cost optical components such as
DML and VCSEL is CAP modulation [35]. It allows rela-
tively high data rate to be achieved using optical components
of limited bandwidth. Compared with alternative schemes
such as QAM and OFDM, no electrical or optical complex-
to-real-value conversion is necessary, which involves a com-
plex mixer and radio frequency (RF) source or optical IQ
modulator. Neither does it require the discrete Fourier trans-
form (DFT) utilized in OFDM signal generation and demod-
ulation.
IEEE Network November/December 2013 7
Figure 1. 25 Gbaud PAM system: a) simulation model; b) BER curves; c) power penalty due to RIN for PAM4, PAM8, and PAM16 signals.
Received optical power (dBm)
-28
4
-
L
o
g
(
B
E
R
)
5
3
2
1
-32 -24 -20 -16 -12 -8 -4 0
Laser RIN (dB/Hz)
(b) (c)
-155
1
P
o
w
e
r

p
e
n
a
l
t
y

(
d
B
)
0
2
3
4
5
-160 -150 145 -140 -135 -130 -125 -120
SMF
TX
Optical
source
O
-
M
U
X
O
-
D
E
M
U
X
PAM2
PAM4
PAM8
PAM16
PAM4 BTB
PAM8 BTB
PAM16 BTB
PAM4 after 3 km
PAM8 after 3 km
PAM16 after 3 km
Driver
Transmitter
Receiver
F
E
C
e
n
c
o
d
e
r
L
e
v
e
l
e
n
c
o
d
e
r
SMF
RX
PIN TIA
(a)
Equalizer
APD
F
E
C
d
e
c
o
d
e
r
D
a
t
a
d
e
c
i
s
i
o
n
LU_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:19 PM Page 7
Principle
Figure 2 shows the schematic diagram of system structure
based on CAP modulation. Although the shaping filters at the
transmitter and the match filters at the receiver can be imple-
mented using analog techniques, here we focus on the digital
implementation since it is more likely to be used due to its
flexibility. At the transmitter, the original bit sequence is first
fed to an encoder, which maps blocks of bits into complex
symbols where T is the symbol period. The coded sequence is
then separated into the in-phase and quadrature components.
The two tributaries are first up-sampled by a factor M, that is,
M 1 zeros are inserted between two consecutive input sym-
bols and sent into the two digital shaping filters, respectively.
The outputs of the filters are subtracted. The generated CAP
signal is then converted into an analog signal using a digital-
to-analog (D/A) converter. It is subsequently used to modu-
late a light source. It should be noted that the D/A converter
and digital shaping filters are working at a rate of M/T, but
the bandwidth of the CAP signal is decided by the systems
symbol rate 1/T. At the receiver, direct detection is used, and
the received signal after analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion is
fed into two matched filters to separate the in-phase and
quadrature components. The A/D converter and matched fil-
ters also operate at a rate of M/T. After down-sampling, an
equalization technique is employed, and a decoder is utilized
to obtain the original bit sequence.
The generated CAP signal can be expressed as
s (t) = a(t) f(t) b(t) f
2
(t) (1)
where a(t) and b(t) are the in-phase and quadrature compo-
nents of the transmitted bit sequence after the coding and up-
sampling process, respectively. The functions f
1
(t) = g(t)
cos(2p f
c
t) and f
2
(t) = g(t) sin(2p f
c
t) are the corresponding
impulse response of shaping filters and form a so-called
Hilbert pair [8], as shown in Fig. 3a. g(t) is the square-root
raised-cosine function, which is usually employed as the base-
band impulse response. Note that the shaping filter should
work at a higher rate than the system symbol rate. Thus, the
up-sampling process is used here to match the rate of the
shaping filter and obtain the output analog signal without the
aliasing products.
Assuming that the channel response is ideal, the output of
the two matched filters at the receiver is expressed as
IEEE Network November/December 2013 8
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of system structure based on CAP modulation. The insets are the spectra after A: coding, B: D/A, C: opti-
cal up-conversion, D: direct detection, E: matched lters; F: the frequency response of the shaping and matched lters with different e
(e is the ratio between the number of taps of shaping or matched lters and the up-sampling factor).
Wavelength (nm)
1552.60
-60
P
o
w
e
r

(
d
B
m
)
E
D
F
A
S
S
M
F
Optical
source
D/A
A/D
a(t)
r(t)
M/T
M
A B
C
C
D E
=4
=8
b(t)
In-phase
shaping filter
Quadrature
shaping filter
In-phase
matched filter
M
Quadrature
matched filter
I
/
Q
s
e
p
a
r
a
t
i
o
n
D
o
w
n
-
s
a
m
p
l
i
n
g
E
q
u
a
l
i
z
a
t
i
o
n
D
e
m
a
p
p
i
n
g
M
a
p
p
i
n
g
Direct
detection
1552.55 1552.50
-80
-40
-20
1552.45
Frequency (GHz)
P
o
w
e
r

(
d
B
m
)
B
-40
-20
0
10
0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency (GHz)
P
o
w
e
r

(
d
B
m
)
B
-40
-20
0
20
0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency (GHz)
-20
P
o
w
e
r

(
d
B
m
)
F
-40
0
20
0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency (GHz)
P
o
w
e
r

(
d
B
m
)
E
-40
-20
0
20
0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency (GHz)
P
o
w
e
r

(
d
B
m
)
D
-100
-80
-60
-40
0 2 4 6 8 10
LU_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:19 PM Page 8
r
i
(t) = s(t) m
1
(t) = a(t) h
11
(t) b(t) h
12
(t)
r
q
(t) = s(t) m
2
(t) = a(t) h
12
(t) + b(t) h
22
(t) (2)
Here, m
1
(t) = f
1
(t) and m
2
(t) = f
2
(t) are the impulse
response of the corresponding matched filtesrs, and denotes
convolution: h
11
(t) = f
1
(t) f
1
(t), h
12
(t) = f
1
(t) f
2
(t), h
22
(t)
= f
2
(t) f
2
(t). Figure 3b3d indicates the joint impulse
response h
11
(t), h
12
(t), and h
22
(t), respectively. For the in-
phase component in Eq. 2, the first term on the left is the
desired signal component. However, it is corrupted by the sec-
ond term, which comes from the quadrature component. It
can be observed from the joint impulse response h
11
(t) and
h
12
(t) that the maximum h
11
(t) coincides with the zero of
h
12
(t). Therefore, the desired in-phase component can be
extracted without intersymbol interference (ISI) and the dis-
tortion that comes from the quadrature components at an
appropriate sample time. The same conclusion can be
obtained for the quadrature component in Eq. 2.
As mentioned above, synchronization is very important in
CAP demodulation. However, the appropriate sampling time
is hard to decide, and sampling time offsets will lead to sub-
sequent signals seriously affected by intersymbol interference
(ISI) and the crosstalk between the in-phase and quadrature
components. Considering that the distortions induced by
either ISI or crosstalk is linear, an adaptive equalizer is
needed to recover the output signal of matched filters. Usu-
ally, a fractional space equalizer is adopted, which can equal-
ize the serious channel distortion and time delay. The classic
cascaded modulus algorithm (CMA) [7] is often utilized for
the equalizers because it is a blind algorithm and easy to
realize. However, it is much less effective for a high order
signal modulation system, such as CAP16, which does not
have constant amplitude and the error function in the adap-
tation process will not approach zero even for an ideal
multi-level signal without distortion. Therefore, the cascaded
multi-modulus algorithm (CMMA) is usually utilized for the
mul ti -l evel CAP si gnal [9]. Its error functi on can be
expressed as
(3)
Here, A
1
, A
2
, and A
3
are the radius of the chosen reference
circles. r(t) = p(t) + j q(t) is the output of the matched fil-
ters. For the multi-level CAP system, there is only one com-
plex input for the equalizer as supposed to
polarization-multiplexed (PM) transmission in long-haul sys-
tems.
Since there is no phase noise in the CAP system because
of the use of direct detection, the desired output of the
equalizer should have similar square constellation. A method
called the multi-modulus algorithm (MMA) is presented
with better performance to take advantage of the symbol
statistics of square constellations [10]. Thus, we propose an
equalization scheme for a multi-level CAP system called the
modified CMMA scheme. The error function in Eq. 3 is
modified as
= f r t A A A ( )
c 1 2 3
IEEE Network November/December 2013 9
Figure 3. The impulse responses of: a) in-phase and quadrature shaping lters; b) h
11
(t); c) h
12
(t); d) h
22
(t).
t
(a)
-100
-1.0
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
-50 0 50 100
t
(b)
-100
-1.0
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
-50 0 50 100
t
(c)
-100
-1.0
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
-50 0 50 100
t
(d)
-100
-1.0
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
-50 0 50 100
In-phase
Quadrature
h
11
(t)
h
22
(t) h
12
(t)
LU_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:19 PM Page 9
(4)
Here A
m1
= (L
1
+ L
2
)/2 and A
m2
= (L
2
L
1
)/2, L
1
, L
2
represent the two moduli of the real and imaginary values
of the desired normalized CAP16 symbols, respectively. The
difference between Eqs. 4 and 3 is that both the errors of
the real and imaginary components are calculated. It is sim-
ilar to the MMA scheme but more suitable for multi-level
signals. Thus, the coefficients of the transfer function for
the IQ components will be updated individually. On the
other hand, the separated cost functions do not take into
account the phase of each symbol, so the subsequent phase
rotation in the previous work [4, 11] is unnecessary. Anoth-
er benefit from modified CMMA is the reduced number of
required reference moduli. If the reference modulus is
increasing, the difference of the outer moduli is smaller,
which makes it harder to find a correct reference modulus
during the convergence process. For CAP16 signal, the
number of moduli for CMMA and modified CMMA is 3
and 2, respectively. For CAP32 signal, it is 5 and 3. For
CAP64 signal, it is 9 and 4. Thus, the number of required
reference moduli is reduced significantly with the increase
of the coding level. Note that an initial CMA-based equal-
ization for pre-convergence is utilized for these two schemes
[9]. It can be found from Fig. 4 that the modified CMMA
scheme outperforms CMMA for different bandwidth ratio
and coding schemes. The BL ratio represents the bandwidth
limitation of the transmitter, which is the ratio between the
effective bandwidth of the transmitter and the systems sym-
bol rate. It can also be concluded that modified CMMA is
more suitable for a high order CAP system because the
improvement is increased to 3 dB for a CAP64 system, and
0.6 dB and 1.2 dB for CAP16 and CAP32 systems with little
bandwidth limitation.
Experiment
Figure 5a shows the experiment setup of a CAP16 system.
First, the original data sequence is mapped into four levels
and up-sampled by a factor of 4. Then the separated signal is
sent into two shaping filters with 32 taps. An arbitrary wave-
form generator (AWG, Tektronix 7122C) is used to produce
the RF signal. The square root raised-cosine function is used
as the baseband impulse response with a roll-off coefficient of
0.1. A ligthwave at 1551.6 nm from an external cavity laser is
used as the signal source. The output RF signal is used to
drive the intensity modulator (IM). The fiber launch power is
set at 2 dBm. After the fiber link and PD, the CAP16 signal is
sampled by an oscilloscope and processed offline. First, the
sampled signal is sent into two matched filters with 32 taps, so
the in-phase and quadrature signals are separated. After
down-sampling, the equalizer is used and then followed by sig-
nal demapping. Finally, bit error counting for CAP16 signal is
performed over 2 10
5
bits.
Figure 5b shows the spectrum of the received signal of a 10
Gb/s CAP16 system with CMMA-based equalization. Note
that phase rotation need to be done after the equalization.
The measured BER curves of the CAP16 system with BTB
and over different transmission length are shown in Fig. 5c. 2
dB and 3.5 dB receiver power penalties are observed at BER
of 10
3
with 20 km and 40 km fiber links, respectively.
We also demonstrate a 20 Gb/s CAP16 system. Figure 5d
shows the electrical spectrum after PD. Compared with Fig.
5b, the received 5 Gbaud signal is distorted because of the
bandwidth limitation of the AWG, electrical amplifier, and
oscillator scope (Tektronix TDS6604, 6 GHz analog band-
width). In fact, the maximum power attenuation can be over
8 dB at the high-frequency components. Compared to the
CMMA scheme, 3.2 dB improvement at BER of 10
3
after
BTB transmi ssi on i s found when the modi fi ed CMMA
scheme is used, as shown in Fig. 5e. Therefore, the pro-
posed modified CMMA scheme can lower the requirement
for in-band frequency response flatness of CAP systems. 0.9
dB and 1.7 dB receiver power penalties are observed at
BER of 10
3
with 12 km and 24 km fiber links, respectively,
but 5.1 dB penalty for 40 km transmission. The channel
response fading is believed to be the reason for this large
penalty, which cannot be neglected without dispersion com-
pensation.
The demonstrated data rate is limited by the analog band-
width of the AWG and scope used. A much higher data rate
can be expected when higher-speed AWG is used. Using a
high-speed AWG, multiband CAP, and EML, 102 Gb/s signal
transmission over 15 km single-mode fiber (SMF) have
recently been realized successfully [11].
Direct Detected Orthogonal Frequency-
Division Multiplexing
Direct detected OFDM (DD-OFDM), also known as DMT,
is another attractive scheme for low-cost and short reach
communication [12]. The output after inverse fast Fourier
transform (IFFT) in a DMT scheme is real-valued, which
makes the IQ modulation onto an RF or optical carrier
unnecessary, so it reduces the system cost. As a kind of
multi-carrier modulation technique, DMT shows high spec-
trum efficiency, flexible multi-level coding, and obvious tol-
erance to ISI.
Figure 6a shows the schematic diagram of the DMT system.
The original bit sequence is first fed to an encoder, which
maps blocks of bits into complex symbols. A high-order cod-
ing scheme can be used here. Then the serial complex data is
divided into parallel streams, and each stream is modulated
onto N subcarriers. In order to get a real-valued time-domain
output, a new 2N points sequence is constructed, and the sec-
ond N points is the conjugate symmetric sequence of the first
half. After 2N point IFFT, the output signal is of real value.
The cyclic prefix is then inserted for each DMT symbol. The
generated DMT signal is passed through a D/A converter and
subsequently used for optical modulation. At the receiver,
direct detection is employed. After A/D conversion, the cyclic
=
=
f p t A A
f q t A A
( )
( )
c m m
c m m
1 1 2
2 1 2
IEEE Network November/December 2013 10
Figure 4. Comparison between CMMA and modied CMMA for
different bandwidth limitations at the transmitter and coding
schemes.
BL ratio
0.6
-24
R
e
c
e
i
v
e
d

o
p
t
i
c
a
l

p
o
w
e
r

a
t

1
0
^
-
3
-21
-18
-15
-12
-9
-6
0.4 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
3 dB
1.2 dB
0.6 dB
CAP16
CAP32
CAP64
2.0
CAP16, CMMA
CAP32, CMMA
CAP64, CMMA
CAP16, modified CMMA
CAP32, modified CMMA
CAP64, modified CMMA
LU_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:19 PM Page 10
prefix is removed and followed by 2N points FFT. Only the
first half of the 2N points output after FFT is necessary for
signal decoding.
There are several issues in DMT modulation system. The
most important one is the high peak-to-average power ratio
(PAPR) for multi-carrier modulation. This shortcoming
would bring serious nonlinear distortion in the electrical and
optical domains, especially at the driving power amplifier
and in the fiber link. It would also reduce the dynamic range
of a DMT system. Usually, a complementary cumulative dis-
IEEE Network November/December 2013 11
Figure 5. a) Experimental setup of CAP system; b) electrical spectrum of received 10 Gb/s CAP16 signal; c) BER performance of 10
Gb/s CAP16 system with different transmission lengths; d) the spectrum of 20 Gb/s CAP16 signal at different nodes; e) BER perfor-
mance of 20 Gb/s CAP16 system with different equalization schemes.
Received optical power (dBm)
(c)
-24
A
1E-4
B
E
R
1E-3
0.01
-26 -22 -20 -18 -16
(a)
Offline processing CAP16 generator
4
-
l
e
v
e
l
s
d
e
m
a
p
p
i
n
g
E
q
u
a
l
i
z
a
t
i
o
n
D
o
w
n
-
s
a
m
p
l
i
n
g
I
/
Q

m
a
t
c
h
e
d
f
i
l
t
e
r
Oscillator
scope
Fiber link
SSMF
EDFA
4
-
l
e
v
e
l
s
d
e
m
a
p
p
i
n
g
U
p
-
s
a
m
p
l
i
n
g
I
/
Q
s
e
p
a
r
a
t
i
o
n
I
/
Q

s
h
a
p
i
n
g
f
i
l
t
e
r
CMMA, BTB
Modified CMMA, BTB
Modified CMMA, 12 km
Modified CMMA, 24 km
Modified CMMA, 40 km
Before AWG
After AWG
After PD, BTB
BTB
After 20 km
After 40 km
IM
EA
ECL
B C
C
B
A
Frequency (GHz)
(b)
-20
E
l
e
c
t
r
i
c
a
l

p
o
w
e
r

(
d
B
)
0
20
40
1 0 2 3 4 5
Received optical power (dBm)
(e)
1E-3
B
E
R
1E-4
0.01
-12 -14 -16 -18
0.9 dB
1.7 dB
3.2 dB
5.1 dB
-20
Frequency (GHz)
(d)
P
o
w
e
r
10
20
0
-10
-20
-30
2 0 4 6 8
8 dB
10
AWG
LU_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:19 PM Page 11
tribution function (CCDF) curve is used to evaluate the
PAPR performance. CCDF presents the probability distribu-
tion that the PAPR of the current signal symbol is higher
than a certain threshold, PAPR0. Figure 6b indicates the
PAPR performance comparison for different schemes. It can
be found that the CAP system has 1 dB better PAPR perfor-
mance than the DMT system at CCDF of 10
3
. We also add
a curve to indicate the PAPR performance of a discrete
Fourier transform spread (DFT-S) OFDM system, which is
well known as an effective PAPR reduction technique in
long haul coherent OFDM transmission. Compared to the
CAP system, there is 0.3 dB improvement but at the cost of
an extra FFT at the transmitter, so the computational com-
plexity is increased.
Another key issue that affects the multi-carrier system per-
formance is intercarrier interference (ICI) [13]. Frequency
offset between the transmitter and receiver is the key factor
that induces ICI. Although there is no carrier frequency offset
in a DMT system because of the direct detection, the sam-
pling frequency offset caused by the instability of the crystal
oscillator of the sampling module has an obvious influence on
a DMT system. This sampling frequency offset will make the
mismatch between the frequency grid of subcarriers and FFT,
leading to serious distortion. On the other hand, ICI also
comes from the FFT process at the receiver. The distortion
from one of the subcarriers will spread over the whole fre-
quency band during the FFT process, and this distortion is
very hard to equalize.
Commercial 10 G-class DML-based 50 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s
DMT systems have recently been proposed [14, 15]. The
longer distance transmission is limited by the chromatic dis-
persion in the fiber link. Therefore, new DSP techniques that
reduce the PAPR and ICI, and improve chromatic dispersion
tolerance for DMT systems are required.
Outlook
A number of modulation formats are available for direct mod-
ulated short reach optical communication systems. Among
them, PAM is the simplest to implement. Reasonable perfor-
mance can be obtained when PAM4 and PAM8 are used. It is
a good candidate for a very short reach optical communica-
tion system with distance below 10 km. For longer transmis-
sion distances and data rates beyond 100 Gb/s, alternative
modulation formats need to be considered. Among them are
multicarrier modulations based on discrete multitone modula-
tion and/or optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing.
50 Gb/s transmission using DMT over 20 km single mode
fiber and DML [14], and 40 Gb/s transmission over 80 km
using OFDM and EML have been realized[7]. CAP-based
modulation offers much promise as a technology that may
offer very high data transmission rate while allowing simple
system implementation since it allows simple modulation and
direct detection to be utilized. System performance depends
significantly on the algorithm employed at the transmitter and
the receiver. Further work in this area should help to signifi-
cantly improve system performance further while simplifying
system implementation.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by project G-UA44 and G-YL24 of
the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Huawei Technolo-
gies Co. Ltd, the NHTRDP (973) of China (Grant No.
2010CB328300), NNSF of China (No. 61107064, No.
61177071), NHTRDP (863 Program) of China
(2011AA010302, 2012AA011302), and the National Key Tech-
nology R&D Program (2012BAH18B00).
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IEEE Network November/December 2013 12
Figure 6. a) Schematic diagram of DMT modulation system; b)
PAPR performance comparison for different schemes. The
number of subcarriers for the OFDM scheme is 256, and there
are four modulation levels.
PAPRO (dB)
(b)
(a)
6 5
10
-3
10
-4
C
C
D
F
10
-2
10
-1
10
0
7 8 9 10 11 12
Transmitter
Optical
source
DMT
DFT-S OFDM
CAP
D/A
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S1
SN
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r
t
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o
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p
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n
g
2
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F
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Conjugate
symmetric
sequence
S1
SN
S0
S1
SN
Receiver
Direct
detection
A/D
C
P
r
e
m
o
v
a
l
P
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l
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t
o
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LU_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:19 PM Page 12
[15] W. Yan et al., 100 Gb/s Optical IM-DD Transmission with 10G-Class
Devi ces Enabl ed by 65 GSampl es/s CMOS DAC Core, Proc.
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Biographies
LI TAO (taoli522930) received a B.S. degree from Huazhong University of Sci-
ence and Engineering, China, in 2006. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student with
the Department of Communication Science and Engineering, Fudan University,
Shanghai, China, and an exchange student in the Department of Electronic
and Information Engineering, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His
research interests include advanced modulation format, OFDM, and short-
reach optical communications.
YU JI (jiyucandy@gmail.com) received her Ph.D. degree from Beijing University
of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China, in 2013. Her research inter-
ests include optical signal processing, and high-speed optical transmission sys-
tems. Currently, she is working at China Mobile Group Beijing Company Ltd.
JIE LIUs biography was unavailable when this issue went to press.
ALAN PAK TAO LAU (eeaptlau@polyu.edu.hk) received his B.A.Sc. degree in
engineering sciences and M.A.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engi-
neering from the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2003 and
2004, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from Stanford University in 2008 and joined the Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, where he is currently an associate professor. His current research
interests include various aspects of coherent fiber optic communication sys-
tems and OPM. He is currently the principal investigator and/or co-investi-
gator of various government and industry funded research projects in optical
communications. He is a reviewer and Technical Program Director for vari-
ous IEEE/OSA journals and international conferences in photonics and com-
munications.
NAN CHI received her B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from BUPT in 1996 and 2001,
respectively. From July 2001 to December 2004, she worked as an assistant
professor at the Research Center COM, Technical University of Denmark, Lyn-
gby. From January 2005 to April 2006, she was a research assistant at the
University of Bristol, United Kingdom. She joined Wuhan National Laboratory
for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, from
June 2006 to May 2008, where she worked as a full professor. Since May
2008, she joined Fudan University. She is the author or co-author of more
than 100 papers. Her research interests are in the area of convergence of
wireless and optical networks, all-optical processing, and advanced modula-
tion formats
CHAO LU (chao.lu@polyu.edu.hk) received his B.Eng. degree in electronic engi-
neering from Tsinghua University, China, in 1985, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, in 1987 and
1990, respectively. From 1991 to 2006, he was with the School of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as
a lecturer, senior lecturer, and associate professor. From June 2002 to Decem-
ber 2005, he was seconded to the Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency
for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, as program
director and department manager. Since April 2006 he has been a professor
in the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Hong Kong Poly-
technic University. His research interests include optical communication sys-
tems and networks, fiber devices for optical communication, and sensor
systems.
IEEE Network November/December 2013 13
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