Efficient Digital Coherent Detection of A 1.

2-Tb/s 24-
Carrier No-Guard-Interval CO-OFDM Signal by
Simultaneously Detecting Multiple Carriers Per Sampling

Xiang Liu
1
, S. Chandrasekhar
1
, Benyuan Zhu
2
, and D. W. Peckham
2

1: Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, 791 Holmdel-Keyport Road, Holmdel, NJ 07733, USA
2: OFS Labs, 19 Schoolhouse Rd, Somerset NJ, 08873, USA
e-mail: xliu20@alcatel-lucent.com

Abstract: We experimentally demonstrate efficient detection of a 1.2-Tb/s 24-carrier NGI-
CO-OFDM signal with 12.5-Gbaud PDM-QPSK carrier-modulation by simultaneously
recovering 2 or 3 carriers per 50-GSamples/s-sampling, and show its performance after
transmitting the signal over 7,200 km.
2010 Optical Society of America
OCIS: (060.1660) Coherent communications, (060.5060) Phase modulation
1. Introduction
Tb/s per channel transmission is currently under active study for future Ethernet applications [1-3]. Digital
coherent detection [4-6] is considered as a promising technique for future high-speed transmission because it
offers high receiver sensitivity and is capable of compensating for transmission impairments such as chromatic
dispersion (CD) and polarization-mode dispersion. However, the sampling speed of the analog-to-digital
converter (ADC) needed in digital coherent detection is expected to be limited to well below 100 GSamples/s in
the foreseeable future, causing an electronic bottleneck issue. One way to address this issue is to use multi-
carrier format to transmit a Tb/s channel and detect a fraction of the channel per digital sampling. This approach
has been demonstrated with coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM), which
also allows for high spectral-efficiency (SE) multiplexing of modulated carriers. Recently, a new optical OFDM
scheme called no-guard-interval (NGI) CO-OFDM was introduced [7,8], in which no transmitter-side DSP is
applied and no guard interval between adjacent symbols is used to provide even higher SE and receiver
sensitivity. At 112-Gb/s/ch, 2-carrier NGI-CO-OFDM was shown to achieve excellent transmission distance [8].
Also advantageously, a 2-carrier NGI-CO-OFDM signal can be detected with low sampling rate ADC to reduce
both hardware complexity and receiver DSP load [8,9], and it was shown that an oversampling factor (defined
as the ratio between the sampling rate and the baud rate of the detected signal) as small as 1.4 is sufficient [10].
More recently, a 1.2-Tb/s 24-carrier NGI-CO-OFDM signal with 12.5-Gbaud PDM-QPSK carriers was
transmitted over 7200 km of ultra-large-area fiber (ULAF) without optical dispersion compensation, achieving a
record SE-distance product of 27,000 kmb/s/Hz for Tb/s/ch transmission [11]. Also demonstrated in this
experiment was the simultaneous detection of 2 carriers, in the presence of all the 24 carriers, with 50-GS/s
ADC, corresponding to an oversampling factor of 2. In this paper, we describe the detection scheme in more
depth, and investigate the impact of imperfect electronic dispersion compensation, which was used prior to the
carrier separation, on the receiver performance. Moreover, we further reduce the oversampling factor to 1.33 by
simultaneously detecting 3 carriers with an aggregate speed of 150 Gb/s per sampling.
2. Principle
Fig. 1 illustrates three digital coherent receiver architectures for receiving a 1.2-Tb/s 24-carrier NGI-CO-OFDM
signal having 12.5-Gbaud PDM-QPSK carriers. To avoid damaging the orthogonal condition, the sampling rate
Frequency
(a) Detection of 1 carrier per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#24
Signal
1
:
2
4

(b) Detection of 2 carriers per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#12
Signal
1
:
1
2

(c) Detection of 3 carriers per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#8
Signal
1
:
8

OLO#1 OLO#24
Frequency
OLO#1 OLO#12
Frequency
OLO#1 OLO#8
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Frequency
(a) Detection of 1 carrier per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#24
Signal
1
:
2
4

(b) Detection of 2 carriers per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#12
Signal
1
:
1
2

(c) Detection of 3 carriers per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#8
Signal
1
:
8

OLO#1 OLO#24
Frequency
OLO#1 OLO#12
Frequency
OLO#1 OLO#8
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
(a) Detection of 1 carrier per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#24
Signal
1
:
2
4

(b) Detection of 2 carriers per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#12
Signal
1
:
1
2

(c) Detection of 3 carriers per sampling
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
D
S
P
OLO#1
OLO#8
Signal
1
:
8

OLO#1 OLO#24
Frequency
OLO#1 OLO#12
Frequency
OLO#1 OLO#8
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Polarization
Diversity
Optical Hybrid
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC

Fig. 1. Illustrations of three different ways to detect a 1.2-Tb/s 24-carrier NGI-CO-OFDM signal having 12.5-Gbaud PDM-QPSK carriers
with 50-GS/s ADC, (a) detecting 1 carrier per sampling with an oversampling factor of 4, (b) detecting 2 carriers per sampling with an
oversampling factor of 2, and (c) detecting 3 carriers per sampling with an oversampling factor of 1.33. OLO: optical local oscillator.

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OWO2.pdf

978-1-55752-884-1/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

for detecting an OFDM carrier is desired to be larger than the spectral bandwidth of the carrier and its
interacting neighbors [8,12]. Assuming 50-GS/s ADC, this condition may be closely met when detecting only 1
carrier per sampling by placing an optical local oscillator at the center of each carrier, as shown in Fig. 1. In this
case, the oversampling factor is 4, indicating poor DSP efficiency. In Fig. 1(b), 2 carriers are detected
simultaneously per sampling with an OLO located between the two carriers. The oversampling factor and the
receiver frontend complexity are reduced by a factor of 2. In this case, however, the OFDM sampling condition
is not strictly met as the sampling bandwidth is not enough to cover the outer neighbors of the two carriers under
detection (the frequency separation between the outer spectral nulls of the two neighbors is 62.5 GHz). Note
also that ADC is generally used after an anti-aliasing filter whose bandwidth is smaller than the ADC sampling
rate. This further limits the sampling of the outer neighbors. One goal of this work is to estimate the penalty
incurred when the OFDM sampling condition is not met. In Fig. 1(c), 3 carriers are detected simultaneously per
sampling which further reduces the oversampling factor to 4/3, or ~1.33.
3. Experimental setup
Fig. 2 shows the experimental setup. 24 frequency-locked carriers spaced at 12.5 GHz were generated from a
single external cavity laser (ECL) based on recirculating frequency shifting (RFS) [1,11]. The carriers were then
separated into odd and even carriers by an optical delay interferometer (ODI) with 25 GHz free spectral range,
before being QPSK modulated by two I/Q modulators to carry different QPSK patterns, which helps to
unambiguously determine the carrier under detection at the receiver. The outputs of the two I/Q modulators
were then time/polarization aligned before being combined and polarization-multiplexed to form a 1.2-Tb/s 24-
carrier NGI-CO-OFDM channel with PDM-QPSK modulation. The spectral bandwidth of the signal was 300
GHz, as shown in Inset (b). This signal was then launched into a recirculating fiber loop consisting of four 100-
km ULAF spans. The effective fiber loss, core area, dispersion, and dispersion slope were respectively 0.185
dB/km, 120 m
2
, 19.9 ps/nm/km, and 0.06 ps/nm
2
/km at 1550 nm. The fiber loss was compensated by
backward Raman amplification. The details on the experimental setup can be found in [11]. The digital coherent
receiver frontend consisted of a polarization-diversity optical hybrid, a tunable OLO, 4 balanced detectors
(BDs), and 4 50-GS/s ADC with 20-GHz analog bandwidth. The OLO was tuned to various locations as shown
in Fig. 1. Several sampled waveforms of length 1x10
6
each were stored and processed offline, as shown in Inset
(c). First, EDC was performed by using a frequency-domain equalization approach [13]. Then, carrier separation
was conducted by shifting each carrier to the baseband and passing each shifted carrier through two cascaded
T/2 and a T/4 delay-and-add filters, where T is the modulation symbol period. Constant modulus algorithm
(CMA) based blind equalization with a 15-tap T/4-spaced adaptive FIR filter was used for polarization
demultiplexing and further signal equalization. Other DSP processes included frequency estimation (FE), phase
estimation (PE), and data recovery. Finally, bit error ratio (BER) of each of the detected carriers was obtained.
/2
I (12.5-Gb/s)
Q (12.5-Gb/s)
PC
PC
Monitor
BDs
(
O
s
c
i
l
l
o
s
c
o
p
e
)
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
Offline
DSP
/2
I (12.5-Gb/s)
I
x
Q
x
I
y
Q
y
E
D
C
C
a
r
r
i
e
r

S
e
p
a
r
a
t
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A
(
n
+
1
)
-
t
h

c
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r
i
e
r
F
E
P
E
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A
F
E
P
E
D
e
c
i
s
i
o
n
EDFA
EDFA EDFA
Q (12.5-Gb/s)
Recirculating Frequency Shifter (RFS)
EDFA
25-GHz
ODI
ECL
/2
12.5-GHz
PC
12.5-GHz
Filter
EDFA
(c)
SW
18x
Raman
100-km
400-km ULAF per loop
Delay
PC
y
Delay
EDFA
(a)
SW
OLO
(b)
PBC
PC
x
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
EDFA
Polarization
Diversity
Optical
Hybrid
n
-
t
h
c
a
r
r
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C
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A
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n
(
n
-
1
)
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c
a
r
r
i
e
r
ECL
/2
I (12.5-Gb/s)
Q (12.5-Gb/s)
PC PC
PC PC
Monitor
BDs
(
O
s
c
i
l
l
o
s
c
o
p
e
)
ADC
ADC
ADC
ADC
(
O
s
c
i
l
l
o
s
c
o
p
e
)
ADC ADC
ADC ADC
ADC ADC
ADC ADC
Offline
DSP
/2
I (12.5-Gb/s)
I
x
Q
x
I
y
Q
y
E
D
C
E
D
C
C
a
r
r
i
e
r

S
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p
a
r
a
t
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n
C
a
r
r
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r

S
e
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C
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A
C
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A
(
n
+
1
)
-
t
h

c
a
r
r
i
e
r
F
E
F
E
P
E
P
E
D
e
c
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c
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P
E
P
E
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c
i
s
i
o
n
D
e
c
i
s
i
o
n
EDFA
EDFA EDFA
Q (12.5-Gb/s)
Recirculating Frequency Shifter (RFS)
EDFA
25-GHz
ODI
ECL
/2
12.5-GHz
PC
12.5-GHz
Filter
EDFA
(c)
SW SW
18x
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
400-km ULAF per loop
Delay
PC PC
y
Delay
EDFA
(a)
SW SW
OLO
(b)
PBC
PC PC
x
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
Raman
100-km
EDFA
Polarization
Diversity
Optical
Hybrid
n
-
t
h
c
a
r
r
i
e
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e
c
i
s
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o
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e
c
i
s
i
o
n
(
n
-
1
)
-
t
h

c
a
r
r
i
e
r
ECL

Fig. 2. Schematic of the experimental setup. Insets: (a) the spectrum of 24 frequency-locked optical carriers before modulation;
(b) the spectrum of the 1.2-Tb/s signal; and (c) block diagrams of the receiver DSP. PC: polarization controller; SW: optical switch.

-2000 -1500 -1000 -500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
7
8
9
10
11
12
Residual dispersion after EDC (ps/nm)
Q

(
d
B
)
left carrier
right carrier

3.810
-3

(a) (b)
Mean BER: 6.810
-4

Fig. 3. Measured BER of the carriers (a) and the dependence of the Q factor vs on the residual dispersion after the EDC for the
11
th
and the 12
th
carriers (b) after the 7200-km transmission with simultaneous detection of 2 carriers per sampling.

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OSA / OFC/NFOEC 2010

OWO2.pdf

4. Experimental results
We first assess the detection performance when 2 carriers are simultaneously detected per sampling. The back-
to-back required OSNR at BER=110
-3
was measured to be 26 dB, showing a small excess penalty of ~0.5 dB
as compared to detecting a 100-Gb/s 2-carrier signal [11]. Fig. 3(a) shows the measured BER of all the carriers
after 7200-km transmission with 7.5-dBm signal launch power and 27.5-dB received OSNR. The mean BER is
6.810
-4
, indicating a low transmission penalty of <1.2 dB. It is also important to assess the tolerance to
imperfect EDC, e.g., due to inexact knowledge about the dispersion experienced by the signal. Fig. 3(b) shows
the dependence of the Q factor as a function of the residual dispersion after the EDC for the 11
th
(left) carrier
and the 12
th
(right) carrier. For 0.5-dB Q penalty, the residual dispersion tolerance is about 1000 ps/nm. As the
spectrum of each carrier is mainly contained within a 0.2-nm window, this dispersion tolerance corresponds to a
CD-induced channel memory duration of 400 ps, comparable to the overall tap length of the CMA-based
equalizer used (300 ps). This indicates good dispersion tolerance of the detection scheme (with the CMA-based
equalizer used after carrier separation).
We then proceeded to assess the detection performance when 3 carriers are detected per sampling to achieve
a low oversampling ratio of 1.3. Fig. 4(a) shows recovered constellations of three representative carriers in the
back-to-back configuration with OSNR=35 dB, showing Q factors (estimated from symbol variance) ranging
from 16.5 dB to 18 dB. Fig. 4(b) shows the measured BER of the carriers after the 7200-km transmission. The
mean BER is almost the same (within experimental errors) as that measured with 2 carriers per sampling. This is
reasonable as the ADC sampling speed is just sufficient to cover the main spectral contents of the 3 carriers.

Carrier-1 Carrier-11 Carrier-24
Q~18dB Q~16.5dB
Q~16.5dB
Q~18dB Q-17dB
x-pol.
y-pol.
Q~16.5dB
Carrier-1 Carrier-11 Carrier-24
Q~18dB Q~16.5dB
Q~16.5dB
Q~18dB Q-17dB
x-pol.
y-pol.
Q~16.5dB

(a) (b)
3.810
-3

Mean BER: 6.210
-4

Fig. 4. (a) Sample recovered constellations of three representative carriers in the back-to-back configuration with OSNR=35 dB;
(b) Measured BER of the carriers after the 7200-km transmission with simultaneous detection of 3 carriers per sampling.
5. Summary
We have experimentally demonstrated the efficient detection of a 1.2-Tb/s 24-carrier NGI-CO-OFDM signal,
showing the potential to substantially reduce the hardware and DSP complexity in detecting Tb/s multi-carrier
NGI-CO-OFDM signal by simultaneously detecting a subgroup of carriers per sampling.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank R. W. Tkach, A. R. Chraplyvy, J.-P. Hamaide, and D. J. DiGiovanni for support, and
A. H. Gnauck for technical assistance.
Reference
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3705-3713 (2009)
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[11] S. Chandrasekhar, X. Liu, B. Zhu, and D. W. Peckham, Transmission of a 1.2-Tb/s 24-carrier no-guard-interval coherent OFDM
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a1988_1.pdf

OSA / OFC/NFOEC 2010

OWO2.pdf