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978-1-4577-0882-4/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE 1
Multi-Tb/s Optical Transmission Based on Polarization-
Multiplexed LDPC-Coded Multi-Band OFDM
Ding Zou, and Ivan B. Djordjevic, Senior Member, IEEE
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
(520) 626 5119, Fax: (520) 626 3144, e-mail: dingzou@email.arizona.edu
ABSTRACT
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) coded multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is one
of the promising pathways to achieve ultra-high speed long-haul optical transmission. In this paper, we study
multi-Tb/s serial optical transport with efficient channel estimation. By using 16-ary QAM-based polarization-
multiplexing with five frequency-locked lasers, used to carry coded-OFDM signal of aggregate data rate
400-Gb/s, we are able to achieve the total aggregate rate of 2 Tb/s. When the pilot-based channel estimation is
used based on either LS or LMMSE criteria, together with channel interpolation based on piece-wise linear
interpolation or piece-wise second-order interpolation, we can compensate for the accumulated chromatic
dispersion over 6500 km of SMF and differential group delay of 500 ps simultaneously with small penalty
(within 0.23 dB) dB, when LDPC codes of rate 0.8 are employed.
Keywords: Fiber-optics and optical communications; Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM);
Low-density parity-check (LDPC); Channel estimation.
1. INTRODUCTION
As 100 G/s Ethernet (100GbE) has become a commercial reality [1], according to some industry experts, the
1TbE standard should be available by 2013. Recently, two main techniques for long-haul optical OFDM
including coherent OFDM (CO-OFDM) and direct-detection optical OFDM (DDO-OFDM) have been proposed
and studied. With the following two key advantages of CO-OFDM: (1) effectiveness in channel estimation and
compensation of chromatic dispersion and polarization mode dispersion (PMD) [2] and (2) high spectral
efficiency, it is a promising candidate for the future ultra-high speed transparent optical networks. In particular,
multi-band coherent optical OFDM is an interesting pathway to achieve multi-Tb/s Ethernet.
In this paper, we propose the multiplexing/de-multiplexing scheme based on multiband CO-OFDM enabling
2 Tb/s Ethernet. Through numerical simulation, we evaluate the performance of proposed scheme per single
band for different channel estimation methods. We show that when the pilot-based signal estimation is used
based on either least-square (LS) or LMMSE criteria, in combination with channel interpolation based on piece-
wise linear interpolation or piece-wise second-order interpolation, we can compensate for the accumulated
chromatic dispersion over 6500 km of SMF and differential group delay of 500 ps simultaneously with small
penalty (within 0.23 dB), when LDPC codes of rate 0.8 are employed.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we describe the conceptual idea of multi-band OFDM as an
efficient way to achieve multi-Tb/s serial optical transport. In Section 3, the proposed polarization-multiplexed
single-band OFDM subsystem is described, and the different channel estimation methods and LDPC decoder are
discussed. The simulation results are provided in Section 4. In Section 5, we provide some important concluding
remarks.
2. PRINCIPLES OF LDPC-CODED MULTI-BAND CO-OFDM ENABLING MULTI-Tb/s
OPTICAL TRANSMISSION
The key idea of multi-band OFDM is to divide the OFDM signal into multiple sub-bands, while maintaining
their orthogonal property. As shown in Fig. 1(a), the multiband OFDM spectrum is composed five OFDM bands,
each carrying 400 Gb/s traffic. By providing the guard spacing of f
G
= mf
sc
(m is integer, f
sc
is subcarrier
spacing), the orthogonally condition between two neighbouring OFDM bands is satisfied. Based on the
assumption that the central frequency of each OFDM band is orthogonal to each other at receiver side, we can
detect each band by using anti-aliasing filters as explained in [3]. Fig. 2(b) illustrates the concept of two-layer
integration circuit (IC) architecture for multi-Tb/s systems. The OFDM in the baseband layer generates 400 G/s
aggregate data rate as described in next section, and in the photonic layer we combine five OFDM bands into
a single stream based on five frequency-locked lasers by using photonic integration circuits (PICs).
3. DESCRIPTION OF LDPC-CODED SINGLE-BAND OFDM SUBSYSTEM
Fig. 2 shows the block diagram of the polarization-multiplexed coded-OFDM. The details of the subsystem and
related concepts will be introduced in the following subsections.

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Figure 1. Conceptual diagram for multi-band OFDM: (a) composition of the multi-band OFDM,
and (b) two-layers integrated circuit hierarchy.
3.1 Transmitter Architecture
The bit streams originating from m different information sources are encoded using different (n, k
i
) LDPC codes
with code rate /
i i
r k n = , where k
i
denotes the number of information bits of the ith (I = 1, 2, , m) component
LDPC code, and n denotes the codeword length, which is the same for all LDPC codes. By using different LDPC
codes allows us to provide stronger FEC protection to high priority signals. In addition, for every particular
system we can find the optimum distribution of code rates. If all the component LDPC codes are identical, the
corresponding scheme is commonly referred to as the bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM). The output of
LDPC encoders are written row-wise into a block-interleaver. The mapper accepts m bits at each time instant i
from the block-interleaver column-wise and mapps them to the corresponding M-ary constellation point.

Figure 2. The architecture of polarization-multiplexed LDPC-coded OFDM: (a) transmitter block diagram,
(b) OFDM modulator configuration (for both x- or y- polarization), (c) receiver configuration, and (d) balanced
coherent detector configuration.
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The OFDM transmitter operation is described as follows. After inserting pilots in specific positions, the QAM
symbols are zero-padded in the middle and used as the input samples of IFFT block. For efficient chromatic and
PMD compensation, the length of the guard interval should be longer than the total spread due to chromatic
dispersion and DGD. After D/A conversion, the OFDM symbols are converted to optical domain by using two
identical I/Q modulators. The same DFB laser is used as a CW source, with x- or y- polarization first separated
by a polarization beam splitter (PBS), and then combined together, upon modulation, by using a polarization
beam combiner.
3.2 Channel Estimation
The channel estimation can be performed by either inserting pilot tones into all of the subcarriers of OFDM
frames with a specific period (block-type pilot channel estimation) or inserting pilot tones into each OFDM
frame (comb-type pilot channel estimation) [4]. In the conventional comb-type pilot based channel estimation
method, the estimate of pilot signals, based on least-square technique, is given by:

^
,
, , ,
(0) (1) ( 1)
[ (0) , (1),. . . ( 1)] [ , ,. . . ] ,
(0) (1) ( 1)
p p p p T T
p LS
p LS p LS p LS p
p p p p
Y Y Y N
H H H N
X X X N

= =

H (1)
where X
p
(i) and Y
p
(i) are transmitted and received symbols of pilot i (I = 0, 1, , N
p
1). In the LS scheme the
estimates of H
p
are sensitive to ASE noise and inter-carrier interference (ICI). Since the channel estimates of
OFDM subcarriers are highly dependent on the accuracy of pilot estimation, the linear minimum mean-square
error (LMMSE) estimator is a preferable option. The representation of pilot subcarriers for MMSE estimator is
given by:

, ,
^ ^ ^
1 2 1 1
, , , ( ( ) ) ,
p p LS p p LS p p p p
H
p LMMSE p LS p LS
n p p

= = +
H H H H H H H H
H R R H R R X X H (2)
where
^
, p LS H is the least-square estimate of
p
H as shown in equation (1) ,
2
n
is the variance of the ASE noise,
and the covariance matrices are defined by:

, , ,
, , , , , ,
{ }, { }, { }.
p p p p LS p LS p LS
H H H
p p p p LS p LS p LS
E E E = = =
H H H H H H
R H H R H H R H H (3)
By performing the averaging over the transmitted training symbols, we obtain the following estimation:

^ ^
1
, ,
, ,
( ) ,
p p p p
p LMMSE p LS
SNR

= +
H H H H
H R R I H (4)
where
2
( ) /
p n
SNR E k = X is the average signal-to-noise ratio, and
2 2
( ) 1/ ( )
p p
E k E k = X X is a constant
dependent on the signal constellation. For 16-QAM modulation scheme, 17/ 9 = .
3.3 Channel Assumptions and Receiver Architecture
It has been shown by Shieh et al. in [5] that the polarization diversity OFDM is capable to compensate for all-
order PMD with small penalty, so it is sufficient to study the first-order PMD by the Jones matrix description:
( )
( ) ( )
( ) ( )
.
xx xy
yx yy
h h
h h

=


H (5)
For coherent detection based OFDM, the received symbol vector
, , , , ,
[ , ]
T
i k x i k y i k
r r = r of the ith OFDM symbol and
kth subcarrier can be represented by

, , ,
( ) .
CD PN
j j
i k i k i k
k e e

= + r s n H (6)
where
, , , , ,
[ , ]
T
i k x i k y i k
s s = s denotes the transmitted symbol vector,
, , , , ,
[ , ]
T
i k x i k y i k
n n = n denotes the noise vector due
to the ASE, and ( ) k H denotes the Jones matrix corresponding to kth OFDM subcarrier. The
CD
denotes the
accumulated chromatic dispersion over fiber length, while

PN
denotes the phase noise process due to the laser
phase noise at transmitter side and local laser at receiver side.
After the compensation of both chromatic dispersion and PMD, which is performed by using channel
information obtained by different channel estimation techniques described above, the estimated QAM symbols
are forwarded to a posteriori probability demapper, in which the symbol log likelihood ratios (LLRs) of both x-
and y- polarizations are calculated. After calculating the bit LLRs, we perform the LDPC decoding based on
sum-product-with-correction term algorithm. The LDPC code used in this paper belongs to the class of quasi-
cyclic codes of large girth (refer to [6] for more details).
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4. NUMERICAL RESULTS
We are turning our attention now to the study of BER performance of the proposed system. In Fig. 3, we show
both the uncoded and LDPD-coded BER performance of the proposed system with coherent detection, for
different estimation schemes and different DGDs. The component LDPC code is based on (girth-10, column-
weight 3) LDPC (16935,13550) code. The OFDM system parameters are chosen as follows: the number of
subcarriers is 4096, the number of pilot is 64 (meaning that overhead is only 1.56%), the modulation scheme is
16-QAM (Gray mapping is employed), the oversampling factor is four times, the OFDM signal bandwidth is
50 GHz for uncoded case, and 62.5 GHz for coded case (meaning the code rate effect has been taken into
consideration). The average launch power per OFDM symbol is set to -3 dBm.
The simulation results show that the LMMSE pilot estimation method together with linear interpolation
method approaches closely the BER performance of perfect estimator for 100 ps DGD. On the other hand, for
500 ps DGD, the penalty of different channel estimation schemes is found to be: 0.23 dB for LMMSE and linear
interpolation, 0.45 dB for LMMSE and second-order interpolation, 3.8 dB for LS and linear interpolation, and
3.99 dB for LS and second-order interpolation, respectively, when compared to the perfect channel estimation.
By setting the OFDM signal bandwidth to be 50 GHz, and for 16-QAM with polarization-multiplexing, when
five OFDM bands are used, the aggregate rate of 2 Tb/s is achieved. The simulation results indicate that with
LMMSE pilot estimation and linear interpolation scheme, we can simultaneously compensate for accumulated
chromatic dispersion of 6500 km and DGD of 500 ps with small penalty.

(a) (b)
Figure 3. LDPC-coded OFDM Band #1 BER performance at baseband information rate of 400 G/s:
(a) DGD =100 ps, and (b) DGD = 500 ps.
5. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have studied the LDPC-coded multiband coherent optical OFDM system, with channel
estimation, as an efficient coded-modulation scheme suitable for long-haul optical transmission with aggregate
data rates exceeding 1 Tb/s. We show that residual chromatic dispersion over 6500 km of SMF and DGD of
500 ps, in a system with aggregate date rate of 400 Gb/s per single band, can be simultaneously compensated
with penalty within 0.23 dB (with respect to the perfect channel estimation) when the LMMSE pilot estimation
and linear interpolation schemes are employed in combination with LDPC codes of large girth. With five
frequency-locked lasers based multiband OFDM, we achieve the aggregate data rate of 2 Tb/s. The proposed
coded-modulation scheme is, therefore, multi-Tb/s Ethernet enabling technology.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper is supported in part by the NSF under grants CCF-0952711, ECCS-0725405 and EEC-0812072.
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