Multi-Rate Nyquist-SCM for C-Band 100Gbit/s Signal over 50km Dispersion-Uncompensated Link

Abstract: In this paper, to the best of our knowledge, we propose the first multi-rate Nyquist-subcarriers modulation (SCM) for C-band 100Gbit/s signal transmission over 50km dispersion-uncompensated link. Chromatic dispersion (CD) introduces severe spectral nulls on optical double-sideband signal, which greatly degrades the performance of intensity-modulation and direct-detection systems. Based on the prior knowledge of the dispersive channel, Nyquist-SCM with multi-rate subcarriers is proposed to keep away from the CD-caused spectral nulls flexibly. Signal on each subcarrier can be individually recovered by a digital signal processing, including the feed-forward equalizer with no more than 31 taps, a two-tap post filter, and maximum likelihood sequence estimation with one memory length. Combining with entropy loading based on probabilistic constellation shaping to maximize the capacity-reach, the C-band 100Gbit/s multi-rate Nyquist-SCM signal over 50km dispersion-uncompensated link can achieve 7% hard-decision forward error correction limit and average normalized generalized mutual information of 0.967 at received optical power of -4dBm and optical signal-to-noise ratio of 47.67dB. In conclusion, the multi-rate Nyquist-SCM shows great potentials in solving the CD-caused spectral distortions.