1.12-Tb/s 32-QAM-OFDM Superchannel with 8.

6-b/s/Hz
Intrachannel Spectral Efficiency and Space-Division
Multiplexing with 60-b/s/Hz Aggregate Spectral Efficiency

Xiang Liu
1
, S. Chandrasekhar
1
, X. Chen
1,2
, P. J. Winzer
1
, Y. Pan
1
, B. Zhu
3
, T. F. Taunay
3
, M. Fishteyn
3
, M. F.
Yan
3
, J. M. Fini
3
, E.M. Monberg
3
, and F.V. Dimarcello
3

1: Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, 791 Holmdel-Keyport Road, Holmdel, NJ 07733, USA
2: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
3: OFS Labs, 19 Schoolhouse Rd, Somerset NJ, 08873, USA
e-mail: xiang.liu@alcatel-lucent.com

Abstract: We demonstrate the generation of a 1.12-Tb/s superchannel with a net intrachannel-
spectral-efficiency (ISE) of 8.6 b/s/Hz, and its transmission over a 76.8-km seven-core-fiber using
space-division-multiplexing, achieving a record aggregate ISE of 60 b/s/Hz per fiber.
OCIS: (060.1660) Coherent communications; (060.5060) Phase modulation; (060.2330) Fiber Optics Communications.
1. Introduction
To satisfy the ever-increasing capacity demand in optical fiber communications, both the spectral efficiency (SE)
and the data rate carried by a wavelength channel have been increasing dramatically [1,2]. Channel data rates of 1
Tb/s and beyond have been demonstrated using the superchannel concept [3-6], achieving intrachannel SEs (ISE,
defined as the net channel bit rate divided by the channels spectral width) between ~4 and ~7 b/s/Hz. Using high-
level quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM), ISEs beyond 7 b/s/Hz have been demonstrated at sub-Tb/s data rates
[7-9]. Here, we report the generation and detection of a 1.12-Tb/s superchannel based on coherent optical orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) of 20 subchannels, each carrying a net 56-Gb/s using OFDM with
polarization-division-multiplexed (PDM) 32-QAM subcarriers. A novel method to generate 20 seamlessly-packed
and frequency-locked subchannels with flat spectrum and low crosstalk among them is introduced. The ISE of the
superchannel is 8.6 b/s/Hz, which is to the best of our knowledge the highest ISE reported for Tb/s-class
superchannels. We further leverage recent advances in multi-core fiber (MCF) [10-12] to demonstrate space-
division multiplexing (SDM) at a record aggregate ISE of 60 b/s/Hz per fiber by transmitting this 1.12-Tb/s
superchannel over a 76.8-km seven-core fiber.
2. Experimental Setup
Figure 1 shows the schematic of the experimental setup. At the transmitter, an external cavity laser (ECL) at 1548.3
nm with a linewidth of ~100 kHz was used as the laser source. A Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) based 5-comb
generator, driven by a 25.94-GHz sine-wave with ~3V

amplitude generated 5 frequency-locked carriers with a

Fig. 1 Schematic of the experimental setup: (a) transmitter and (b) transmission link and receiver. Insets: (1-3) measured optical
spectra at 6 different stages in the transmitter; (4) image of the cross section of the 7-core fiber. PBC: polarization-beam combiner.
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978-1-55752-932-9/11/$26.00 Optical Society of America
spacing of 25.94 GHz. A wavelength-selective switch (WSS) was configured to have a 3-dB bandwidth of 120 GHz
to reject the unwanted harmonics generated by the 5-comb generator. A novel 4-comb generator, based on a nested
MZM whose two branches were respectively driven by 3.24-GHz and 9.73-GHz sine-waves with ~V

amplitudes,
quadrupled the number of frequency-locked carriers to 20 with a carrier spacing of 6.48 GHz. The optical spectra of
the generated carriers at different stages are shown as insets in Fig. 1. Remarkably, all the unwanted harmonics were
rejected to be over ~35 dB down. The 20 carriers were then modulated by a PDM I/Q modulator to generate a PDM-
32QAM-OFDM superchannel. Note that the 20 carriers had different optical phases so the 20 subchannels in the
superchannel were effective de-correlated, in addition to the intrinsic de-correlation of the subcarriers in each
OFDM subchannel. Different from previous experiments [3-9], the x- and y-polarization components of the PDM
signal were independently modulated to better emulate a real transmitter. Four independent drive patterns were
stored in two synchronized arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs), each having two 10-GS/s digital-to-analog
converters (DACs). Pseudo-random bit sequences (PRBS) of length 2
15
-1 were used as the payload data. The IFFT
size used for OFDM was 128, and the guard-interval (GI) was 2 samples, resulting in a small GI-overhead of 1.56%.
Each polarization component of an OFDM symbol contained 78 32-QAM data subcarriers (SCs), 4 pilot SCs, one
unfilled DC SC, and 45 unfilled edge SCs. The spectral bandwidth of each modulated subchannel was 6.48 GHz
(=83/12810GHz), and the 20 frequency-locked 6.48-GHz-spaced input carriers enabled seamless superchannel
formation with a total bandwidth of 129.7 GHz, as shown in inset (3). Three correlated dual-polarization training
symbols (TSs) [7] were used for every 697 payload OFDM symbols, resulting in a small TS-overhead of 0.43%.
Excluding 7% overhead for forward-error correction [13], the net payload data rate of the superchannel was 1.12
Tb/s (=10GHz10b/s/Hz78/130697/70020/1.07), corresponding to a net ISE of 8.61 b/s/Hz
(=1.12Tb/s/129.7GHz). With SDM in the seven-core fiber, the aggregate per-fiber ISE became 60 b/s/Hz. This
superchannel could likely be put on a 150-GHz grid with <-40 dB crosstalk to neighbors, as indicated in inset (3), to
achieve an aggregate WDM SE of 52 b/s/Hz.
For SDM transmission, the superchannel was split into 8 copies by a 18 splitter, whose seven outputs were
amplified by seven erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) before launching into a 76.8-km seven-core-fiber
[11,12] through a tapered multi-core connector (TMC). After transmission, a second TMC was used to couple out
the signals, which were later amplified to compensate for the fiber loss. An optical switch (SW) was used to direct
the received signal from each of the seven cores to a digital coherent receiver with offline digital signal processing
(DSP). Electronic low-pass filters (LPFs) with 6-GHz bandwidth were used before the analog-to-digital converters
(ADCs) to select a subchannel under measurement, and an optical local oscillator (OLO) was another ECL whose
frequency was tuned to the center of each of the 20 subchannels. Digitized waveforms of 1-million samples each
were processed offline in a computer to perform electronic dispersion compensation, nonlinear compensation
(NLC), polarization de-multiplexing, frequency/phase recovery, and bit error ratio (BER) measurement using
previously reported PDM-OFDM algorithms [7].



Fig. 2. Measured back-to-back BER performance of the 1.12-
Tb/s PDM-32QAM-OFDM superchannel and theoretical
limit. Inset: typical recovered subcarrier constellation at
OSNR=40 dB.
Fig. 3. Q
2
-factor (derived from BER) of the center
subchannel as a function of signal launch power. Inset:
recovered subcarrier constellation after transmission.
3. Experimental Results
Figure 2 shows the measured back-to-back BER performance of the 1.12-Tb/s PDM-32QAM-OFDM superchannel
(averaged over all 20 subchannels). The required optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), defined with a 0.1-nm noise
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bandwidth, is 30.5 dB at BER=4.610
-3
, the threshold of a 7%-overhead hard-decision FEC [13]. Compared to the
theoretical performance, the implementation penalties were 2.3 dB and 3.7 dB at BER=4.610
-3
and 210
-3
,
respectively, much improved over previous 32-QAM results [7,8]. Figure 3 shows the received signal Q
2
factor of
the center subchannel (averaged over the center core and an outer core) versus signal launch power per core (P
in
).
The optimum power is 2 dBm. With the use of single-step NLC, the optimum Q
2
factor was increased by 0.7 dB.
Figure 4 shows the measured BER performance of the superchannel after passing through the seven cores of the
76.8-km MCF simultaneously, with 2-dBm launch power into each core. The mean and the worst BER values are
respectively 3.810
-3
and 4.310
-3
, which are both lower than the assumed FEC threshold. The received OSNR
values are also shown in Fig. 4. The mean OSNR is ~34.5 dB, indicating a moderate transmission penalty of ~1.1
dB in Q
2
factor. It is of interest to investigate the impact of core-to-core crosstalk on the transmission performance
of this 32-QAM superchannel. Figure 5 shows the BER performance of the superchannel after passing through the
center core (core index 1) of the 76.8-km MCF with 2-dBm launch power but with different signal power loadings
on the 6 outer cores. The mean BER for the case with no signals in the outer cores is essentially the same (within
experimental error) as that with equal signal power in all cores, indicating negligible core-to-core crosstalk penalty.
This is expected, considering the low total crosstalk from the 6 outer cores to the center core of about -35 dB at the
signal wavelength [12]. This agrees reasonably with the crosstalk tolerance of QAM [14].

Fig. 4. Measured BER performance of the superchannel after
passing through the seven cores of the 76.8-km MCF
simultaneously, with 2-dBm launch power into each core.

Fig. 5. BER performance of the superchannel after passing
through the center core of the 76.8-km MCF with P
in
center
=2
dBm but different signal power loadings on the 6 outer cores.

4. Conclusion
We have experimentally demonstrated the generation and detection of a 1.12-Tb/s PDM-32-QAM-OFDM
superchannel with a small implementation penalty and with a record ISE of 8.6 b/s/Hz for Tb/s-class superchannels.
Key enablers include the generation of 20 high-quality frequency-locked carriers, simultaneous modulation of both
polarizations of the PDM signal, and a low overhead used for OFDM signal processing. We have further
demonstrated a record aggregate ISE of 60 b/s/Hz by transmitting the 1.12-Tb/s superchannel over a 76.8-km seven-
core fiber, with negligible core-to-core crosstalk penalty. This demonstration shows the potential of the combination
of high-SE signal formats and MCF-based SDM to dramatically increase the achievable spectral efficiency as well
as capacity of a single fiber for sustaining the capacity growth of future optical transport systems.
This work was partially supported by the IT R&D Program of MKE/KEIT (2008-S-044-1), Republic of Korea.
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