Philip Watts Thesis Final

LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Chromatic Dispersion Compensation using

Electronic Signal Processing in High Speed Optical
Communication
Philip Michael Watts
A thesis submitted to University College London for the degree of Doctor of

Philosophy (Ph.D)
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,

University College London,
August 2008
I, Philip Michael Watts, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own.
Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been
indicated in the thesis.
2
Acknowledgements
It was amazing to me when I sat down to write this section, just how many
people have contributed to the success of this work. Firstly, I could not have done
this without the calm, positive guidance and deep understanding of optical networks
of my main supervisor Robert Killey. Polina Bayvel, who formed and built up the
Optical Networks Group (ONG) and its impressive lab, has created an excellent
environment for world class research. I am proud to have done my PhD in such a
group. Both Robert and Polina have never been too busy to offer their time and
advice. The members of the ONG group have made the PhD experience a happy and
stimulating one. In the early days when I was unsure whether I was taking the right
path, the support of the group, including former member Michael Düser, carried me
through. I have received a great deal of help, particularly in the lab, from Lamia
Baker, Yannis Benlachtar, Vitali Mikhailov, Ben Putnam and Benn Thomsen. The
stimulating conversations I enjoyed with Seb Savory produced many interesting ideas
for the work. For the MATLAB simulations, the early work presented in chapters 3
and 4 was developed from code originally written by Robert Killey, and the later
work in chapters 5 and 6 drew heavily on the ONG toolbox of MATLAB functions,
much of which was written and organised by Benn Thomsen.
The work has benefited hugely from collaboration with Intel. In particular
Madeline Glick provided constant support for the work and myself personally. She
was good enough to invite me twice for internships at Intel Research Cambridge
(sadly no more) which led to the FFE/DFE work and got me started with FPGAs.
Pete Kirkpatrick, Song Shang, Martin Lobel and Benny Christensen provided
enthusiastic support for the FFE/DFE work as well as the loan of the integrated
circuits. Song Shang continued to support the EPD work and organised the donation
of one of the FPGA boards. I would also like to mention Michael Dales who got me
started with FPGA programming at Intel Research.
Of course nothing can happen without financial support. The EPSRC provided
funding to me personally through a Doctoral Training Account studentship and
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further support through grant EP/C523865/1. Further financial support for the work
was provided by the EU E-photon One programme. I have also benefited both
financially and in valuable experience from two internships with Intel Research and
consultancy work with Azea Networks and Huawei Technologies. I would like to
thank Rob Griffin and Mike Whale at Bookham technologies for the loan of the
Mach-Zehnder modulator used in the EPD experimental work. I was also honoured
to receive the IEEE LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship in 2006.
I have also appreciated the strong support from my family. Education was
always highly valued in my family and I would like to thank my parents and
grandparents for all their support and encouragement over the years. In particular I
would like to mention, my Grandad, Kenneth Watts, and my Gran, Jean Bratby, both
of whom died while I was completing the PhD. They both always encouraged me in
everything I did and they would have been delighted and proud to have seen the final
result.
Finally, but most importantly, I would like to thank my wife, Lindsey.
Throughout the whole PhD process she has given me her constant support and love.
None of this would have been possible without her.
4
Abstract
As bit rates of optical fibre communications are increased, chromatic dispersion
increasingly becomes a problem. Optical means of compensation have been
traditionally used. However, the rapid increase in available electronic processing
power has made electronic chromatic dispersion compensation a viable option leading
to an adaptive, low cost integrated solution which avoids additional optical losses.
The aim of this thesis is to explore the maximum transmission distance over standard
single mode fibre (SSMF) which can be achieved using only electronic signal
processing while minimising complexity in the optical domain.
The use of feed-forward and decision feedback equalisers in the receiver of an
existing intensity-modulated direct-detection (IM/DD) optical link is explored. An
increase in the 10 Gb/s transmission distance from 70 to 112 km of SSMF is
demonstrated. However, it is shown that this approach is limited by the loss of the
optical field phase information after direct detection. Techniques for overcoming this
limit by control or measurement of the optical field are reviewed. The rest of the
thesis explores the transmission limits of one such technique: electronic predistortion
(EPD).
Firstly, limits due to the fundamental transmission properties of EPD signals in
non-linear fibre are considered. Secondly, the design of the high speed digital signal
processing (DSP) for EPD is described, showing the effect of DSP compensator
structure, DAC resolution and sample rate on transmission performance. EPD is
shown to be capable of ultra-long haul DWDM operation over SSMF.
The design of an experimental 10.7 Gb/s EPD transmitter with real time digital
signal processing implemented on FPGAs is described. Transmission over 1200 km
of SSMF is demonstrated and the performance is assessed in comparison with
simulation results.
Finally, conclusions concerning the benefits of EPD transmission in comparison
with competing technologies are provided. Areas for further research are identified.
5
Table of Contents
1. Aims and Overview of the Thesis .....................................................................18

1.1. Scope of the Thesis......................................................................................19
1.2. An Overview of the Thesis ..........................................................................20
1.3. Original Contributions .................................................................................22
1.4. Publications Arising from the Thesis Work..................................................23
2. Chromatic Dispersion and Other Transmission Impairments:
Compensation and Mitigation..........................................................................27
2.1. Impairments Affecting the Transmission Distance of Single Mode Fibre
Communications..........................................................................................27
2.1.1. Optical Noise ..........................................................................................27
2.1.2. Chromatic Dispersion..............................................................................30
2.1.3. Polarisation Mode Dispersion..................................................................34
2.1.4. Fibre Nonlinearity ...................................................................................35
2.2. Techniques for Overcoming Chromatic Dispersion......................................37
2.2.1. Dispersion Compensating Fibre and Dispersion Management..................37
2.2.2. Optical Adaptive Compensators ..............................................................38
2.2.3. Chirped Transmission..............................................................................40
2.2.4. Mid-span Phase Conjugation ...................................................................42
2.2.5. Electronic Compensation.........................................................................43
2.3. Determination of the Maximum Transmission Distance...............................44
2.3.1. Bit Error Rate..........................................................................................44
2.3.2. Required Optical Signal to Noise Ratio ...................................................46
2.3.3. Maximum Transmission Distance – Linear Case .....................................46
2.3.4. Maximum Transmission Distance – Nonlinear Case................................48
2.4. Modulation Formats for Maximising Transmission Distance .......................49
2.4.1. Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK)..................................................51
2.4.2. Duobinary ...............................................................................................51
6
2.4.3. Differential Quaternary Phase Shift Keying (DQPSK).............................54
2.5. The Mach-Zehnder Modulator.....................................................................55
2.6. Summary of Chromatic Dispersion Compensation and Mitigation ...............57
3. Electronic Dispersion Compensation for IM/DD Systems...............................58
3.1. Common Equalisers used in Digital Communications..................................58
3.1.1. Feed-forward Equaliser ...........................................................................58
3.1.2. Decision Feedback Equaliser ...................................................................60
3.1.3. Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation.............................................61
3.1.4. Published Literature on the Effect of Equalisers in Optical
Communications…………………………………………………………..63
3.2. Limits of Feed-forward and Decision Feedback Equalisers for
Compensating Chromatic Dispersion...........................................................65
3.2.1. IM/DD Transmission with FFE and DFE: Simulation Model...................65
3.2.2. Simulation Results Investigating Optimum FFE and DFE Configuration
and Maximum Transmission Distances....................................................68
3.2.3. Experimental Confirmation of Increased Transmission Distance using
FFE and DFE ..........................................................................................73
3.3. Equalisers for IM/DD Systems – Discussion and Conclusions .....................75
4. Electronic Dispersion Compensation Techniques which Operate on the
Optical Field......................................................................................................79
4.1. Passive Field Detection................................................................................79
4.2. Single Sideband Optical Transmission Combined with Receiver Based
Electronic Compensation.............................................................................81
4.3. Single Sideband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing ....................87
4.4. The Coherent Receiver ................................................................................90
4.5. Electronic Predistortion ...............................................................................93
4.6. Discussion of Techniques which Operate on the Optical Field .....................98
5. Fundamental Transmission Limitations of Electronically Predistorted
Signals .............................................................................................................100
5.1. Simulation Model ......................................................................................101
5.1.1. Calculation of EPD Waveforms by Back-propagation ...........................104
7
5.1.2. Transmission and Receiver Model.........................................................105
5.2. Single Channel Transmission Limits..........................................................106
5.3. DWDM Transmission Limits.....................................................................110
5.4. The Effect of SPM Compensation..............................................................115
5.5. Discussion of EPD Transmission Limit Results .........................................119
6. Limitations of Electronic Predistortion due to Digital Signal Processing .....121
6.1. Digital Signal Processing Options for Chromatic Dispersion Compensation121
6.1.1. Look-up Tables .....................................................................................122
6.1.2. FIR Filters .............................................................................................124
6.1.3. Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) Filters..................................................130
6.1.4. Hybrid Structures ..................................................................................131
6.2. Overall Effect of Digital Signal Processing for Long Haul Transmission ...131
6.2.1. Simulation Technique............................................................................132
6.2.2. Calculation of FIR Filter Coefficients....................................................133
6.2.3. Simulation Results.................................................................................135
6.3. Benefits of the Duobinary Modulation Format for EPD Implementation....138
6.3.1. Simulation Technique............................................................................138
6.3.2. Effect of Implementation Parameters on EPD Performance ...................142
6.4. Discussion of EPD Limitations due to DSP ...............................................145
7. An FPGA-based Electronic Predistortion Transmitter using Real Time
Digital Signal Processing ................................................................................147
7.1. Introduction to the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) .....................148
7.2. Top Level Design ......................................................................................149
7.3. Digital to Analog Converter Characterisation ............................................152
7.4. FPGA Design ............................................................................................155
7.5. Transmission Experiments.........................................................................158
7.5.1. Method for the Transmission Experiments.............................................158
7.5.2. Transmission Performance ....................................................................159
7.6. Potential Improvements to the Transmitter ................................................162
8. Conclusions and Recommendations for Further Work.................................166
8.1. Summary of the Original Contributions in this Thesis................................166
8
8.2. Electronic Predistortion – Conclusions on Long-Haul Operation and
Comparison with other Electronic Techniques ...........................................168
8.3. FPGA-based Transmitters and Receivers for Optical Communications ......171
8.4. Recommendations for Further Work..........................................................172
8.4.1. Determination of Upper Bound for XPM penalty...................................172
8.4.2. Non-linearity Compensation for EPD ....................................................173
8.4.3. Higher Bit Rates for EPD Systems ........................................................177
8.4.4. Other EPD Investigations ......................................................................178
8.4.5. Further Development of the FPGA-based Transmitter ...........................178
Appendix A: References .........................................................................................180
Appendix B: Mathematical Details of Simulation Technique...............................195
B-1 Fibre Transmission Modelling: the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation .............195
B-2 Semi-Analytical Estimation of BER ..............................................................196
B-3 The Monte-Carlo Technique..........................................................................197
Appendix C: List of Abbreviations and Acronyms ...............................................202
9
List of Tables
Table 1 Zero ISI transmission distances for various standard bit rates .........................34
Table 2 Example bit pattern transmitted by the duobinary logic circuit (x = don’t care)
.............................................................................................................................54
Table 3 Maximum single span transmission distances for various FFE and DFE
configurations ......................................................................................................72
Table 4 Simulation Parameters...................................................................................103
Table 5 Gate count calculations for time domain FIR filters with and without
exploitation of symmetry....................................................................................129
Table 6 Analysis of required OSNR errors due to Monte-Carlo uncertainty, back-to-
back and after 5600 km single channel transmission...........................................201
10
List of Figures
Figure 1: Wavelength division multiplexed optical fibre links (a) electrically
regenerated and (b) optically amplified and compensated (SSMF = standard
single mode fibre, EDFA = erbium doped fibre amplifier, DCF = dispersion
compensating fibre)..............................................................................................19
Figure 2: Effect of optical noise in a long haul amplified link (a) variation of signal
and ASE noise power at input to each span and (b) OSNR after each span. ..........29
Figure 3: Dispersion characteristics of various fibre types ............................................32
Figure 4: Intersymbol interference caused by chromatic dispersion ..............................33
Figure 5: Concept of the chirped fibre Bragg grating....................................................39
Figure 6: Typical pulse width variation with distance due to interaction of SPM chirp
and chromatic dispersion, reproduced from [Agrawal 1995].................................40
Figure 7: Typical BER against OSNR curves. ..............................................................45
Figure 8: Required OSNR against transmission distance in the linear case showing (a)
a typical uncompensated link (b) a link with adaptive compensation or greater
dispersion tolerance and (c) a link with fixed chromatic dispersion compensation.
.............................................................................................................................47
Figure 9: Required OSNR against launch power per span for a given transmission
distance. ...............................................................................................................48
Figure 10: Linear and Non-linear limits on transmission distance.................................49
Figure 11: Field constellation diagrams of OOK, DPSK, Duobinary and DQPSK. .......50
Figure 12: Logic diagram of duobinary transmission....................................................52
Figure 13: 10.7 Gb/s Duobinary and NRZ-OOK spectra both with -3 dBm compared
using 0.2 nm resolution bandwidth. ......................................................................53
Figure 14: Comparison of the dispersion tolerances of 10.7 Gb/s duobinary and NRZ-
OOK over SSMF..................................................................................................53
Figure 15: The Mach-Zehnder modulator (a) dual drive and (b) Cartesian....................56
Figure 16: Dual drive MZM field and power transfer functions. ...................................56
Figure 17: A 5-tap feed-forward equaliser. ...................................................................59
11
Figure 18: The decision feedback equaliser. .................................................................60
Figure 19: {010}, {110}, {011}, {111} transmitted sequences and received
waveforms after 100 km of SSMF. .......................................................................61
Figure 20: A possible analog MLSE implementation using correlators.........................62
Figure 21: Digital implementation of MLSE. ...............................................................62
Figure 22: Block diagram of the simulation of 10 Gb/s transmission using FFE and
DFE equalisers [Watts 2005 A]. ...........................................................................65
Figure 23: FFE simualtion model (a) FFE diagram showing signal and noise terms
and (b) the normalised autocorellation function of white Gaussian noise after
low pass filtering with cut-off frequencies of 6, 8 and 10 GHz..............................67
Figure 24: Simulated performance of various FFE and DFE configurations [Watts
2005 A]................................................................................................................69
Figure 25: Back-to-back optimised FFE characteristics (a) amplitude response (b) tap
weights (c) eye diagram without FFE (d) eye diagram with FFE optimised for
minimum BER [Watts 2005 A]. ...........................................................................70
Figure 26: Optimised FFE characteristics in the presence of significant chromatic
dispersion for (a) the 5-tap FFE and (b) the 13-tap FFE. .......................................71
Figure 27: Effect of the number of FFE taps on chromatic dispersion compensation (a)
FFE alone (b) FFE combined with a 1-stage DFE [Watts 2005 A]........................72
Figure 28: Transmission experiment for the investigation of FFE and DFE in
overcoming chromatic dispersion [Watts 2005 A]. ...............................................74
Figure 29: Experimental results (points) with simulation results (lines) for
uncompensated, 5-tap FFE and 5-tap FFE with DFE cases [Watts 2005 A]. .........75
Figure 30: The effect of square-law or direct detection on signals affected by
chromatic dispersion [Watts 2005 C]....................................................................76
Figure 31: Passive optical field detection and chromatic dispersion compensation
scheme, from [Ellis 2006]. ...................................................................................80
Figure 32: Scheme for generating optical SSB using the digital phase shift technique
[Watts 2004]. .......................................................................................................84
Figure 33: Back-to-back optical spectrum and eye diagram from the SSB transmitter
using m = 0.2 [Watts 2004]. .................................................................................85
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Figure 34: Effect on required OSNR (for 10-9 BER measured in a 0.1 nm bandwidth)
of varying the modulation depth, m, on chromatic dispersion tolerance using a 5-
tap FFE as electronic compensator [Watts 2005 B]...............................................86
Figure 35: Performance of SSB signals with an uncompensated receiver, receivers
with FFEs having 5, 9 and 13 taps and a receiver having an ideal inverse
chromatic dispersion response (required OSNR is for 10-9 BER measured in a
0.1 nm bandwidth) [Watts 2005 B].......................................................................87
Figure 36: SSB-OFDM transmission scheme, from [Lowery 2005]..............................89
Figure 37: Phase and polarisation diversity receiver, from [Savory 2007 B]. ................92
Figure 38: The concept of electronic predistortion [Watts 2005 C]...............................93
Figure 39: Digital EPD Transmitter using (a) a Cartesian or (b) a dual drive MZM,
from [Killey 2005 B]............................................................................................94
Figure 40: Comparison of a conventional NRZ-OOK signal with an EPD signal for
transmission over 5600 km for the same bit sequence and launch power (-5
dBm)....................................................................................................................95
Figure 41: Concept of back-propagation for calculation of EPD waveforms...............103
Figure 42: Generation of desired duobinary signal. ....................................................104
Figure 43: Eye diagrams of the target signals for (a) NRZ-OOK and (b) duobinary
signals both with -5 dBm power. ........................................................................105
Figure 44: Fibre transmission and receiver model. .....................................................106
Figure 45: Required OSNR for 10-3 BER against launch power after 4000 km
transmission for the NRZ-OOK and Duobinary formats. The actual OSNR
achievable is also shown. ...................................................................................107
Figure 46: Linear and non-linear launch power limits for (a) NRZ-OOK and (b)
Duobinary showing maximum achievable transmission distance and optimum
launch power......................................................................................................108
Figure 47: OSNR margin at the optimum launch power against transmission distance
for NRZ-OOK and duobinary.............................................................................109
Figure 48: Peak-to-Mean ratios in linear scale against transmission distance for
conventional dispersion mapped, NRZ-OOK EPD and duobinary EPD signals. .110
13
Figure 49: Ideal EPD waveforms for 5600 km transmission using the same bit
sequence comparing NRZ-OOK and duobinary modulation formats...................111
Figure 50: Bar charts of required OSNR for 50 trials of a 9-channel, 5600 km
simulation for various launch powers. ................................................................112
Figure 51: Required OSNR against launch power for single channel and 9 channel
cases after 5600 km transmission........................................................................113
Figure 52: OSNR margin against transmission distance in the single channel and 9
channel cases using -6.5 dBm launch power in both cases. .................................114
Figure 53: OSNR margin against transmission distance in the single channel (using -
6.5 dBm launch power) and 9 channel cases (using -7.0 dBm). ..........................114
Figure 54: Required OSNR against launch power for chromatic dispersion and SPM
compensation after 4000 km transmission for various values of back-propagation
step size. ............................................................................................................115
Figure 55: Required OSNR against launch power for 9 channels with 50 GHz spacing
and chromatic dispersion and SPM compensation applied after 5600 km
transmission. The single channel result is also shown for comparison................116
Figure 56: Bar charts of required OSNR for 50 trials of a 9-channel, 5600 km
simulation for various launch powers using both chromatic dispersion and SPM
compensation. ....................................................................................................117
Figure 57: Peak-to-mean ratios against launch power for 5600 km NRZ-OOK EPD
signals with SPM compensation. The ratio without SPM compensation is
indicated for comparison. ...................................................................................118
Figure 58: Concept of LUT compensation [Killey 2005 A]. .......................................123
Figure 59: Memory requirements for implementing LUT for chromatic dispersion
compensation using 4-bit DAC and 2 Sa/b output for 16, 32 and 64 parallelism. 123
Figure 60: Direct form time domain representation of an FIR filter with 5 taps. .........124
Figure 61: FIR filters for chromatic dispersion compensation by (a) time domain (b)
frequency domain methods.................................................................................125
Figure 62: Comparison of real valued multiplications required to implement time
domain and frequency domain FIR filters for chromatic dispersion compensation.
...........................................................................................................................126
14
Figure 63: Implementation of 1 x 4-bit multipliers for time domain FIR
implementation with truth table. .........................................................................128
Figure 64: A 5-tap FIR filter exploiting impulse response symmetry [c(3)=c(1),
c(4)=c(0)]...........................................................................................................128
Figure 65: Gate counts against number of taps for FIR filters with and without
exploitation of symmetry....................................................................................130
Figure 66: Transmitter model used in simulations to determine the effect of
implementation. .................................................................................................133
Figure 67: Impulse responses of real and imaginary chromatic dispersion
compensation functions (solid lines) and 2 Sa/b FIR coefficients (points) for
1200 km SSMF. 55 coefficients are shown. .......................................................134
Figure 68: Required OSNR against transmission distance using the truncation filter
design method, 4.4 taps per 100 km and 3-bit, 4bit and unquantised DACs. .......136
Figure 69: Mean required OSNR for transmission distances of 800 – 5600 km against
number of taps for 3, 4, 5-bit and unquantised DACs..........................................136
Figure 70: Standard deviation of required OSNR for transmission distances of 800 –
5600 km against number of taps for 3, 4, 5-bit and unquantised DACs. ..............137
Figure 71: Effect of varying FIR tap weight resolution on mean and standard
deviation of required OSNR for transmission distances of 400 – 5600 km, 5.3
taps per 100 km and 4-bit resolution DAC..........................................................137
Figure 72: Simulation technique for investigation of implementation parameters. The
precoder was only used for duobinary transmission [Watts 2007 A]. ..................139
Figure 73: Technique for obtaining LUT entries using back-propagation. Also shown
are the eye diagram for the duobinary case and the transfer function of the
inverse sinc equalisation filters [Watts 2007 A]. .................................................140
Figure 74: (a) A practical DAC and (b) the Fourier transform pair of a sample and
hold circuit, reproduced from [Proakis 2001]......................................................141
Figure 75: Response of the filters designed for DAC equalisation [Watts 2007 A]. ....142
Figure 76: Required OSNR for 10-5 BER using 15-bit processor memory, 5-bit
resolution duobinary and NRZ-OOK using 1 and 2Sa/b DSP [Watts 2007 A].....143
15
Figure 77: Transmission distance for 2 dB required OSNR penalty as LUT size is
varied [Watts 2007 A]. .......................................................................................144
Figure 78: Effect of DAC resolution after 500 km transmission using 15-bit LUT
[Watts 2007 A]...................................................................................................145
Figure 79: Typical structure of an FPGA, reproduced from [Ercegovac 1998]............149
Figure 80: Top level transmitter design. .....................................................................150
Figure 81: Clocking scheme for the transmitter. .........................................................151
Figure 82: Delay circuits at the input of each FPGA transmitter to allow alignment to
within one bit period. .........................................................................................151
Figure 83: Sawtooth waveforms from the Vreal DAC using 100 ms persistence time...152
Figure 84: Normalised DAC output voltage for the 16 input levels using the Vreal
DAC. .................................................................................................................153
Figure 85: Non-linearity performance of the DACs showing (a) Integral non-linearity
and (b) differential non-linearity.........................................................................154
Figure 86: Noise performance of the DACs................................................................155
Figure 87: Main functions and data flow in each FPGA. ............................................156
Figure 88: Implementation of a single FIR filter and scaling operation. d(0..54) are
the 1-bit input samples, c(0…27) are the tap weights, a is the scaling factor and b
is the scaling offset.............................................................................................157
Figure 89: Transmission experiment arrangement ......................................................159
Figure 90: BER against OSNR plots for back-to-back, 400 km, 800 km and 1200 km
transmission distances. .......................................................................................160
Figure 91: BER against OSNR plots showing pattern dependency after 1200 km
transmission. 27, 29 and 211 DeBruijn sequences are used. .................................161
Figure 92: Eye diagrams for (a) back-to-back (b) 400 km and (c) 800 km. .................161
Figure 93: Proposed SPM and chromatic dispersion compensation using the LUT
approach, from [Killey 2006]. ............................................................................174
Figure 94: OSNR penalty against LUT address size for 10 Gb/s 1200 km SSMF
transmission with SPM compensation, from [Killey 2006]. ................................174
Figure 95: Tolerance to launch power variations without SPM compensation (dotted
line) and when using SPM compensation for expected launch powers of 0 dBm
16
(dashed line) and +3 dBm (solid line) after 1200 km 10 Gb/s transmission, from
[Killey 2005 B]. .................................................................................................175
Figure 96: The Monte-Carlo receiver model...............................................................198
Figure 97: Uncertainty in required OSNR estimate due to Monte-Carlo after 5600 km
single channel transmission using -8 and -5.5 dBm.............................................199
Figure 98: Bar charts of required OSNR for 50 trials of 5600 km transmission in
single channel (grey) and 9-channel (black) cases...............................................200
17
1. Aims and Overview of the Thesis
Since its commercial introduction in the 1980s, optical fibre communication has
become the mainstay of backbone networks for voice and data communication. Huge
volumes of single mode fibre have been installed globally for metropolitan and long-
haul communications. The demand for capacity is continuing to grow and for
economic reasons, future installations of new fibre will become increasingly rare.
Therefore, solutions must be found that are capable of increasing capacity while using
the existing installed fibre.
In the early years of long haul fibre communication, electrical regenerators were
employed every 50 km or so. These so called OEO (optical–electrical-optical)
regenerators converted the signal back to the electrical domain, and after
amplification and retiming, retransmitted it into the next fibre span as shown in
Figure 1a. In wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems each wavelength had
to be demultiplexed, regenerated and re-multiplexed for retransmission. Following
the introduction of the erbium doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) in the early 1990s this
was no longer necessary – signals at 622 Mb/s or 2.5 Gb/s could be transmitted long
distances without electrical regeneration. However, the transmission distances were
now limited by the accumulation of distortion due to chromatic dispersion and fibre
non-linearity. This became a critical issue when 10 Gb/s systems were considered –
without compensation, chromatic dispersion limited the maximum transmission
distance to less than 100 km. Some form of compensation for chromatic dispersion
was necessary to avoid electrical regeneration. In most cases dispersion
compensating fibre (DCF) was added to the amplifier sites (along with additional
amplification to overcome the loss of the DCF) as shown in Figure 1b. The method
of dispersion mapping using DCF has allowed the transmission of impressive
numbers of channels over long distances without regeneration. However the high
cost and optical losses, inflexibility and large physical size of the DCF modules are a
considerable disadvantage. Also, for high channel count dispersion mapped WDM
18
Chapter 1 – Aims and Overview
systems, often special fibres are required. As we will see, other optical solutions also
suffer from these drawbacks.
Optical Photodiodes Lasers Optical
(a) demultiplexer multiplexer
Regen Regen
Regen Regen
SSMF SSMF SSMF
40 - 100 km
Regen Regen
Dispersion compensation and

(b) additional amplifier added for 10 Gb/s
SSMF SSMF SSMF

EDFA EDFA EDFA EDFA
DCF DCF
40 - 100 km
Figure 1: Wavelength division multiplexed optical fibre links (a) electrically regenerated and (b)
optically amplified and compensated (SSMF = standard single mode fibre, EDFA = erbium
doped fibre amplifier, DCF = dispersion compensating fibre).
The continued rapid growth in the processing power of electronics has opened up
an alternative which is explored in this thesis: the use of electronic signal processing,
at the transmitter or receiver, to overcome chromatic dispersion and other
impairments. This electronic dispersion compensation function can readily be made
adaptive, can be integrated with other electronic functions with very low cost and
physical size and will not add additional optical losses to the network. The per
channel nature of electronic compensation avoids the need for special fibres.
1.1. Scope of the Thesis
The aim of the thesis is to investigate the maximum transmission distance which
can be achieved using purely electronic dispersion compensation. Systems will be
considered which use only electronic chromatic dispersion compensation with no
form of optical compensation. As we will see, adding electronic compensation to a
conventional intensity modulated direct detection system (the majority of optical
communications systems in use today) offers only modest increases in transmission
19
distance compared with an uncompensated system. Therefore some modification is

required to the optical domain to allow effective electronic compensation. However,
we will seek to avoid adding optical components as far as possible. For example, the
suitability of advanced modulation formats combined with electronic compensation
will be considered provided that it does not introduce further complexity.
The discussion will be limited to systems with bit rates of 10 Gb/s per
wavelength as necessary electronic components such as analog-to-digital and digital-
to-analog converters are already available. The possibilities of upgrading
electronically compensated systems to higher bit rates will be discussed in the final
chapter.
As the vast majority of currently installed fibre is standard single mode fibre
(SSMF), with dispersion ≈ 17 ps/nm·km for wavelengths around the minimum
attenuation wavelength of 1.55 µm, we will also assume that this is to be used in all
investigations.
1.2. An Overview of the Thesis
Chapter 2 covers the background necessary to understand the rest of the thesis.
Firstly, the transmission impairments which affect long haul single mode fibre
communications are described, of which chromatic dispersion is the most important
in this thesis. Methods of compensating or mitigating chromatic dispersion are
reviewed. The methods to be used for assessing system performance and for
determining the maximum transmission distance are described. The operation of the
Mach-Zehnder modulator, which is crucial for generating the modulation formats and
implementing the electronic compensation schemes described in this thesis, is
discussed.
Most of today’s optical networks use simple intensity modulation and direct
detection. The most attractive use of electronic compensation, from a commercial
point of view, would be to add an electronic compensator at one of the terminals of
such a system without making any changes to the optical components. This
possibility is explored in chapter 3. Equalisers which have proved successful in other
forms of digital communication are investigated for use in optical links. It is shown
20
by numerical simulations and experiments that the increase in maximum transmission

distance at 10 Gb/s using electronic Feed-forward and Decision Feedback equalizers
in the receiver is approximately 60 %.
The reason for the limited success of electronic compensation in IM/DD systems
is the non-linearity of optical detection and in particular the fact that the phase of the
optical field in the fibre can not be controlled or measured. Chapter 4 reviews
techniques proposed for increasing transmission distances by modifying the optical
terminals to allow the electronic compensators to operate on the optical field.
Various techniques are discussed including coherent reception, use of single sideband
modulation formats and electronic predistortion (EPD).
Chapter 4 concludes by identifying EPD as a technology which can offer long
haul transmission distances with minimum complexity and the rest of the thesis
concentrates on this technique.
Two main factors limit the transmission distances of EPD systems: firstly,
fundamental limits due to the propagation of EPD signals in non-linear fibre and
secondly, the accuracy with which the EPD waveform can be generated using
realistic digital signal processing. These limits are explored in chapters 5 and 6
respectively. In chapter 5, the maximum transmission distances of ideal 10.7 Gb/s
EPD signals compensated for chromatic dispersion only are determined for single
channel and 50 GHz spaced DWDM operation using the NRZ-OOK and duobinary
modulation formats. The potential benefits of adding compensation for self-phase
modulation is assessed in DWDM operation. In Chapter 6, the benefits of using the
duobinary modulation format in terms of increased bit rate or reduced processing
complexity are investigated. The most efficient method of implementing DSP for
chromatic dispersion compensation is determined. Finally, the effect on performance
of using realistic DSP (compared with the ideal EPD signals used in chapter 5) is
found.
In chapter 7, the design of the first 10.7 Gb/s EPD transmitter with real time
digital signal processing implemented on FPGAs is described. Transmission results
are given for distances up to 1200 km of standard single mode fibre and compared
21
with the simulation results of previous chapters. The sources of penalty are assessed
and the potential for improved transmitter performance is discussed.
Finally a summary of the thesis is given in chapter 8. Conclusions concerning
the benefits of EPD transmission in comparison with conventional dispersion mapped
transmission and competing electronic technologies are provided. Areas for further
research are identified.
1.3. Original Contributions
The original contributions made during the thesis work are:

1. The transmission distance limits of 10 Gb/s intensity modulated direct detection
systems using receiver-based feed-forward and decision feedback equalisers were
determined and experimentally verified [Watts2005 A];
2. The synthesis of single sideband (SSB) optical signals and receiver-based
chromatic dispersion compensation both using low complexity digital filters was
demonstrated [Watts 2004];
3. The linear transmission limits of 10 Gb/s SSB transmission combined with
receiver-based feed-forward equalisation was determined [Watts 2005 B];
4. The fundamental transmission distance limits due to non-linear transmission of
10.7 Gb/s chromatic dispersion compensated EPD signals were found for single
channel and DWDM operation using the NRZ-OOK and duobinary modulation
formats;
5. It was shown that, despite penalties due to cross-phase modulation, adding
compensation for self-phase modulation is beneficial for 10.7 Gb/s, 50 GHz
spaced DWDM systems with worse case polarisation;
6. It was demonstrated that EPD using the duobinary modulation format both
reduces the complexity of electronics and is a potential path to implementation at
higher bit rates [Watts 2007 A];
7. Demonstrated that time domain FIR filters exploiting symmetry of the impulse
response are the most efficient method for implementation of chromatic
dispersion compensation for EPD [Watts 2007 B], [Watts 2008];
22
8. Demonstrated that zero mean penalties can be obtained using 5-bit 2 Sample/bit
digital-to-analog converters (DAC) and FIR filters with 5.3 taps per 100 km
SSMF;
9. The first 10.7 Gb/s FPGA-based EPD transmitter was constructed and tested over
transmission distances of up to 1200 km [Watts 2006], [Watts 2007 B], [Watts
2008] .
1.4. Publications Arising from the Thesis Work
Journal Papers
P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Single sideband optical
signal generation and chromatic dispersion compensation using digital filters’,
Electronics Letters, Vol.40, No.15, pp958-960, July 2004
R.I.Killey, P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, ‘Electronic dispersion

compensation by signal predistortion using digital processing and a dual drive Mach-
Zehnder modulator’, IEEE Photonics Tech. Letters, Vol.17, No.3, pp714-716, March
2005
P.M. Watts, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, P. Bayvel, M. Glick, M. Lobel, B. Christensen,

P. Kirkpatrick, S. Shang, R.I. Killey, ‘Performance of Single Mode Fibre Links using
Electronic Feed-Forward and Decision Feedback Equalizers’, IEEE Photonics
Technology Letters, Vol.17, No.10, pp.2206-2208, October 2005
P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘An FPGA-based Optical

Transmitter Design Using Real-Time DSP for Advanced Signal Formats and
Electronic Predistortion’, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. 25, No.
10, October 2007
P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, Y.Benlachtar, V.Mikhailov, P.Bayvel, and R.I.Killey,

‘10.7 Gb/s transmission over 1200 km of standard single-mode fiber by electronic
predistortion using FPGA-based real-time digital signal processing’, Optics Express,
Vol. 16, No.16, pp.12171-12180, August 2008
23
Conference Papers
P.M.Watts, R.I.Killey, V.Mikhailov, P.Bayvel, ‘Demonstration of electrical
dispersion compensation of single sideband optical transmission’, Proc. London
Communications Symposium 2003 (LCS 2003), London (UK), pp.69-73, Sept 2003
P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Single sideband optical

signal generation and chromatic dispersion compensation using digital filters’, Proc.
30th European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2004), Stockholm
(Sweden), Paper We4.P.126, Sept 2004.
R.I.Killey, P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, ‘Electronic dispersion

compensation by signal predistortion using a dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator’,
Proc. Optical Fibre Communications (OFC 2005), Anaheim (USA), Paper OThJ2,
Feb 2005
P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, S.Savory, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Electronic signal

processing techniques for compensation of chromatic dispersion’, Proceedings or
Proc. 10th European Conference on Networks and Optical Communications
(NOC’2005), pp 545-553
P.M.Watts, V. Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Performance of optical

single sideband signal transmission systems using adaptive electronic dispersion
compensators’, 31st European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2005),
Glasgow (Scotland), September 2005
P.M. Watts, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, P. Bayvel, M. Glick, M. Lobel, B. Christensen,

P. Kirkpatrick, S. Shang, R.I. Killey, ‘Performance Limits of Electronic Feed-
Forward and Decision Feedback Equalizers for Single Mode Fibre Links’, 31st
European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2005), Glasgow (UK),
September 2005
P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘An FPGA-based Optical

Transmitter Using Real-Time DSP for Implementation of Advanced Signal Formats
24
and Signal Predistortion’, 32nd European Conference on Optical Communications

(ECOC 2006), Cannes (France), Sept 2006
P.M.Watts, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Performance of Electronic Predistortion

Systems with 1 Sample/bit Processing using Optical Duobinary Format’, 33rd
European Conference on Optical Communcations (ECOC 2007), Berlin (Germany),
16th -20th September 2007
P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, Y.Benlachtar, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel,

R.I.Killey, ‘10.7 Gb/s Electronically Predistorted Transmission over 800 km Standard
Single Mode Fibre using FPGA-based Real-Time Processing’, 34th European
Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2008), Brussels (Belgium), 21st-
25th September 2008
Invited Conference Papers

R. I. Killey, P. M. Watts, M. Glick, P. Bayvel, ‘Electronic precompensation
techniques to combat dispersion and nonlinearities in optical transmission’, 31st
European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2005), Glasgow (UK),
Paper Tu4.2.1, Sept 2005
R. I. Killey, P. M. Watts, M. Glick, P. Bayvel, ‘Electronic dispersion compensation

by signal predistortion’, Conference on Optical Fiber Communications (OFC 2006),
Anaheim (USA), Paper OWB3, Feb 2006
R.I. Killey, P.M. Watts, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, M. Glick, P. Bayvel, ‘Electronic

dispersion compensation in optical communications using digital signal processing’,
Workshop WMJ on Electronic Equalization for Multigigabit Communications, at
IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2006), San Francisco (USA)
11th-16th June 2006
25
M. Glick, P. Watts, R. Waegemans, P. Bayvel, R. I. Killey, ‘Electronic signal

processing to improve system performance of optical interconnects’, 2007
International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON 2007), Rome
(Italy), 1st – 5th July 2007
R.I.Killey, P.M.Watts, S. J. Savory, R. Waegemans, Y. Benlachtar, V. Mikhailov, M.

Glick, and P.Bayvel, ‘Impairment mitigation in high speed optical communications
using digital signal processing’, Optoelectronic and Communications Conference
(OECC 2007), Yokogawa (Japan), 9th-13th July 2007
P.M.Watts, M. Glick, R. Waegemans, Y. Benlachtar, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, P.

Bayvel, R. I. Killey, ‘Experimental Demonstration of Real-Time DSP with FPGA-
Based Optical Transmitter’, 2008 International Conference on Transparent Optical
Networks (ICTON 2008), Athens (Greece), 23rd – 26th June 2008
Seminars
P.M.Watts, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Techniques for long haul transmission
without optical dispersion compensation’, IEE Seminar on Optical Fibre
Communications and Electronic Signal Processing, London (UK), Dec 2005
26
2. Chromatic Dispersion and Other
Transmission Impairments: Compensation
and Mitigation
This chapter provides background information on which the rest of the thesis is
based. Firstly, the factors which limit transmission distances over single mode fibre
(SMF) are described, in particular noise caused by optical amplification, chromatic
dispersion and fibre nonlinearities (section 2.1). To maximise 10 Gb/s transmission
distances over SSMF, some form of compensation or mitigation is required to
overcome the relatively high chromatic dispersion. Techniques that are currently
used and have been proposed are reviewed in section 2.2. Next, the performance
measures for optical transmission which will be used in the thesis, including the
method of determining the maximum transmission distance, are outlined in section
2.3. Choice of modulation format can also affect maximum transmission distances.
Section 2.4 describes the properties of the modulation formats discussed in this thesis
and section 2.5 introduces the Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) which is used to
generate many formats and also is used in many electronic compensation schemes.
Finally the chapter is summarised in section 2.6.
2.1. Impairments Affecting the Transmission Distance

of Single Mode Fibre Communications
As stated above, the subject of this thesis is to investigate the maximum

transmission distances achievable using only electronic chromatic dispersion
compensation. This section discusses the factors which affect transmission distance
in an optically amplified link including chromatic dispersion.
2.1.1. Optical Noise

In an optically amplified long haul communications link (of the type shown in
Figure 1b), the dominant noise source is amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise
generated by the optical amplifiers. Other sources such as shot noise and thermal
27
Chapter 2 – Chromatic Dispersion: Compensation and Mitigation
noise can usually be neglected as they do not impact overall performance. This is
true of all amplified optical fibre communications, irrespective of signal or amplifier
type.
The most widely used optical amplifier in modern optical systems is the erbium
doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) and the use of this device will be assumed throughout
the thesis. The EDFA consists of a length of fibre which has been doped with erbium
ions capable of producing optical gain. This is pumped with one or more external
lasers to create a population inversion. Thus as the signal passes through the fibre it
is amplified by stimulated emission. However, spontaneous emission also occurs in
each amplifier which generates a noise spectral power density given by [Agrawal
2002]:
PASE = FN (G − 1)hν per Hz -(2.1)
where G is the linear gain ratio, h is Planck’s constant and ν is the photon frequency
and FN is the noise figure (expressed as a linear ratio) of the amplifier due to
spontaneous emission which is dependent on the amplifier design although has a
theoretical minimum of 2.
The optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) is defined as the ratio of signal power to
noise power measured in a given bandwidth. The ideal bandwidth for OSNR
measurements depends on the signal being measured. For 10 Gb/s signals, a
bandwidth of 0.1 nm (=12.5 GHz at 1.55 µm wavelength) is used in most optical
communications literature and this value will be used throughout the thesis. In the
simple case in which N fibre spans have equal length, L, and the EDFA gain is set to
exactly match the loss of the span, the final OSNR is given by [Agrawal 2002]:
αL
G = 10 10
PL
OSNR = -(2.2)
N ⋅ FN (G − 1)hν ⋅ dυ
where α is the fibre loss in dB/km, dυ is the bandwidth of the noise measurement and
PL is the launch power into each span1.
1
In this example, the total power will increase slightly in each span due to the added noise. However,
even in a long link the total power will usually increase by no more than 1 dB
28
5
Signal
0
-5
Power, dBm -10
-15
ASE - 120 km Spans
-20
ASE - 80 km Spans
-25
-30 ASE - 40 km Spans
-35
-40
-45
0 400 800 1200 1600 2000 2400 2800 3200 3600 4000
Transmission Distance, km
(a)
50
45
40
35
OSNR, dB
30 40 km Spans
25 80 km Spans
20
120 km Spans
15
10
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
(b)
Figure 2: Effect of optical noise in a long haul amplified link (a) variation of signal and ASE
noise power at input to each span and (b) OSNR after each span.
Figure 2 shows how the OSNR varies along a long haul amplified link using
equation 2.2 assuming 0 dBm launch power, 0.2 dB/km fibre loss and 4.5 dB
amplifier noise figure. It can be observed that the OSNR gradually declines with
transmission distance. Reducing the spacing between amplifiers also increases the
29
OSNR. However, there are obvious practical and economic limits to this process. It
follows from equations 1 and 2 that, as the ASE added in each amplifier is
independent of the signal power, a higher launch power directly leads to a higher final
OSNR. However, as discussed in section 2.1.4, the launch power is limited by non-
linearity of the fibre.
The dominant effect of ASE noise on the received signal is due to beating in the
square law detection process, including the signal beating with the ASE noise and the
ASE noise beating with itself. The use of a bandpass optical filter before the detector
is used to reduce both these noise sources. Full mathematical details of the modeling
of ASE and calculation of the noise are given in Appendix B.
2.1.2. Chromatic Dispersion

SSMF has a narrow core which only allows a single transversal mode to exist,
thus eliminating dispersion due to multiple spatial modes. However, an optical signal
has a finite bandwidth determined by the laser linewidth and the modulation
bandwidth. Chromatic dispersion arises because the characteristics of single mode
fibre are frequency dependent. In general, the field of an electro-magnetic wave
propagating along a waveguide is given by [Gnauck 1997]:
E ( x, y , z , t ) = Eo ( x, y, z , t ) ⋅ e j ( β ⋅z −ω⋅t ) -(2.3)
where E(x, y, z, t) is the field at time t, propagating in direction z and having some
mode shape in the xy plane, β is the propagation constant and ω is the angular
frequency. In the fibre, the frequency dependent propagation constant is given by:
n(ω ) ⋅ ω
β (ω ) = -(2.4)
c
where n(ω) is the frequency dependent effective refractive index and c is the speed of
light in a vacuum. This can be expanded in a Taylor series:
β2 β3
β (ω ) = β o + β1 (ω − ω o ) + (ω − ω o ) 2 + (ω − ω o ) 3 + K
2 6
-(2.5)
d nβ 
βn =  n 
 dω  ω =ωo
where ωo is a reference frequency. It is the third term which describes first order
30
chromatic dispersion2. Thus (represented in baseband, ωo = 0) after transmission of

distance L, equation 2.3 becomes (neglecting from now on the constant xy
components of the field):
 β ⋅ω 2 ⋅L 
j 2 −ωt 
 
E ( z, t ) = E o ( z, t ) ⋅ e  2 
-(2.6)
However, chromatic dispersion is more often quoted in wavelength units (as it will be
throughout this thesis):
2πc
D=− β2 -(2.7)
λ2
where λ is the wavelength and D is usually quoted in units of ps/(nm·km). From
equations 2.6 and 2.7, the linear transfer function for transmission over dispersive
fibre can be derived:
 − jπDLλ 2 f 2 
H ( f ) = exp   -(2.8)
 c 
where f is the frequency offset from the carrier.
There are two effects which determine the value of chromatic dispersion at a
given wavelength: material dispersion due to the refractive index variation of silica
with wavelength, and waveguide dispersion due to the fibre’s structure [Senior 1992].
The material and waveguide dispersion cancel out at 1.3 µm in SSMF, giving zero
dispersion at this point (Figure 3). However, SSMF has relatively high optical loss
(0.5 dB/km) at this wavelength due to Rayleigh scattering and there is no optical fibre
amplifier commercially available at this wavelength (although research is continuing
on praseodymium doped fibre amplifiers). For these reasons, 1.3 µm is only used for
short range (< 10 km) applications. Development in long haul and metro applications
has concentrated on wavelengths around 1.55 µm due to low optical loss (0.2dB/km)
and the availability of the highly developed EDFA, enabling long transmission
distances without electrical regeneration. However, once electrical repeaters have
been eliminated, the chromatic dispersion of approximately +17 ps/(nm·km) becomes
the limiting factor for SSMF transmission at this wavelength.
2
The fourth term is the second order chromatic dispersion or dispersion slope, an important factor in
the design of dispersion mapped DWDM systems. See section 2.2.1.
31
It is possible by careful control of the fibre core diameter and refractive index
profile to modify the fibre dispersion characteristics. For example, Figure 3 shows
the dispersion characteristics for a dispersion shifted fibre and for a dispersion shifted
fibre with reduced dispersion slope. Both are shown as having zero dispersion at
wavelengths near 1.55 µm although in practice any value of dispersion can be
designed. For dispersion mapped DWDM systems (see section 2.2.1) usually a small
positive or negative value is chosen to control the effect of fibre nonlinearities. These
fibres are described as non-zero dispersion shifted fibres (NZ-DSF). However, the
vast majority of installed fibre is SSMF and the cost of replacing this is prohibitive.
20
15
Chromatic Dispersion
10
Standard SMF
(ps / nm.km)
5
0 Dispersion
Shifted SMF
-5
-10 Dispersion
Flattened SMF
-15
-20
1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7
Wavelength (micron)
Figure 3: Dispersion characteristics of various fibre types.
The effect of chromatic dispersion on a binary pulse is shown in Figure 5. The

different frequency components in the pulse travel at different speeds in the fibre
leading to pulse spreading. Thus, the decision in each bit period is dependent on the
nearby bits in the transmitted sequence, an effect known as intersymbol interference
(ISI). In the example of Figure 4, the decision made on the last zero is affected by the
previous pulse (post-cursor ISI) whereas the first zero is affected by the subsequent
pulse (pre-cursor ISI). In fact, many impairments cause ISI including low pass
filtering and the fibre non-linear effects discussed in section 2.1.4.
32
0 1 0
Transmitted
Decision
Level
Time
Received
Post-
Pre- Cursor
Cursor ISI
ISI
Time
Figure 4: Intersymbol interference caused by chromatic dispersion.
The pulse spreading due to chromatic dispersion is given by [Gnauck 1997]:

τ CD = D ⋅ ∆λ ⋅ L (in ps) -(2.9)
where ∆λ is the signal bandwidth in nanometers and L is the fibre length in kilometers.
∆λ is dependent in general on the modulation format and the symbol rate. Taking the
example of simple non return to zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK, see section 2.4),
there is one bit per symbol and the bandwidth is given approximately by:
1.4λ2 rb
∆λ = -(2.10)
c
where λ is the optical carrier wavelength and c is the speed of light and it has been
assumed that the bandwidth of the NRZ-OOK signal is 1.4 times the bit rate.
Substituting this into equation 2.9 and dividing by the bit period we get:
1.4λ2 rb2 DL
M fibre = (in bits) -(2.11)
c
where Mfibre is the number of bit (or symbol) periods that the pulse spreading covers.
In communication theory, Mfibre is often called the memory of the communication
channel. It will be an important parameter when the design of electronic signal
processing for chromatic dispersion compensation is investigated in chapter 5.
33
Equation 2.11 shows that the pulse spreading increases linearly with transmission
distance and as the square of the bit rate. For a long haul fibre link (L is large), pulse
spreading can extend over many bit periods.
Rearranging equation 2.11 and setting Mfibre = 1 (the pulse is confined to one bit
period) we have an expression for the transmission distance possible without ISI:
c
L= -(2.12)
1.4λ2 rb2 D
Substituting λ = 1.55 µm and D = 17 ps/nm·km, Table 1 shows the possible
transmission distances without ISI for various bit rates. These values agree well with
actual transmission distances in which the effect of signal distortion due to chromatic
dispersion is observed. Beyond these distances, some form of compensation will be
required to maintain performance as discussed in section 2.2.
Table 1
Zero ISI transmission distances for various standard bit rates
Bit Rate (Gb/s) Transmission Distance

over SSMF (km)
2.5 840
10 52.5
40 3.3
100 0.5
2.1.3. Polarisation Mode Dispersion

Ideally, the two orthogonal polarisation states in SMF are identical (degenerate).
However, due to uncertainties in the manufacturing process, the core can be non-
circular or non symmetrical or non-symmetrical stresses can exist due to the material
structure. Any mechanical stress on the installed fibre will exacerbate these effects.
These non-ideal features cause the two polarisation states to be distinct and to have
different refractive indices. Just as chromatic dispersion is due to different
wavelengths traveling at different speeds in the fibre, so polarisation mode dispersion
34
(PMD) is caused by the two polarisation states traveling at different speeds causing a
single pulse to appear as two pulses at the receiver leading to ISI. This pulse
separation in time is termed differential group delay (DGD). In practice, each section
of fibre will exhibit different PMD characteristics, so the DGD will evolve in a
‘random walk’ fashion during fibre transmission leading to a square root dependence
on distance. For this reason, PMD is usually quantified in terms of average DGD per
root distance (in ps/√km). However, temperature variation and mechanical vibration
acting along the length of the fibre cause random variations in DGD and occasional
values which are many times the average. To avoid serious penalty, the DGD must
be a small fraction of the bit period (< 0.3). Thus as the bit rate increases and bit
period decreases, PMD has a larger effect on performance.
This thesis does not deal with compensation of PMD in detail. PMD is mainly a
problem when transmitting at 10 Gb/s or more over older installed fibres which were
manufactured with a less controlled process. More recently manufactured fibre offers
low values of PMD, allowing long haul transmission at high bit rates. However,
where a compensation scheme enables PMD compensation along with chromatic
dispersion compensation it will be discussed in the text.
2.1.4. Fibre Nonlinearity

Non-linear effects in optical fibre can be divided into those due to non-linear
refraction and those due to non-linear scattering. The scattering effects: stimulated
Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) are non-linear
scattering processes which modulate the light in the fibre causing an optical
frequency shift [Senior 1992]. SRS has a very high threshold power greater than 1 W,
which is unlikely to be encountered in most systems. SBS has a lower threshold, but
can be effectively mitigated by applying a frequency dither of a few 10’s of kHz to
the transmitter laser. For these reasons, they will not be considered further in this
thesis.
The non-linear refraction effects are due to the fact that the refractive index of
silica is power dependent [Agrawal 2002]:
35
P
n = no + n 2 -(2.13)
Aeff
where no is the refractive index of silica at low intensities, n2 is its nonlinear index
coefficient, P is the instantaneous power and Aeff is the effective area of the fibre.
This produces a phase shift (in radians) given by:
P
φ = n2 βL = γPL -(2.14)
Aeff
where β is the propagation constant, γ is the non-linear parameter of the fibre

(typically 1.22 W-1km-1 for SSMF) and L is the fibre length.
Self phase modulation (SPM) occurs when the power variations of a signal
modulate the phase of the signal itself. Chromatic dispersion causes this phase
change to be converted to intensity modulation and hence ISI. The distortion
increases as the launch power is increased.
Where dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) has been used to
increase the total capacity of the fibre, cross phase modulation (XPM) and four wave
mixing (FWM) must also be considered. XPM occurs when the phase of a signal is
modulated by the power variations of other signals in the same fibre. Again,
chromatic dispersion converts the phase change to intensity distortion. In a large
DWDM system, the total power in the fibre can be very large but in the presence of
chromatic dispersion, XPM is mitigated by the walk-off effect [Bayvel 2002]. Here,
chromatic dispersion causes channels to travel along the fibre at different speeds so
that pulses are not time aligned for long periods. Hence, the effect of XPM on
performance is inversely dependent on the channel wavelength spacing. Long haul
backbone links are normally specified for 50 GHz minimum channel spacing (even if
initially all channels are not used). To mitigate XPM in large DWDM system, NZ-
DSF fibre is often used to minimise distortion while allowing walk-off.
Four wave mixing (FWM) occurs when two tones beat with each other in the
non-linear fibre to produce other interfering tones. If these tones occur close to other
signals, distortion can occur. As with XPM, chromatic dispersion can help mitigate
FWM due to the walk-off effect.
36
In section 2.1.1, it was shown that the OSNR is increased as launch power is
increased. The non-linear effects above set an upper bound on the launch powers
which can be used in practice.
2.2. Techniques for Overcoming Chromatic Dispersion
This section discusses techniques that have been proposed for chromatic
dispersion compensation.
2.2.1. Dispersion Compensating Fibre and Dispersion Management

Dispersion compensating fibre (DCF) is currently used in most metropolitan and
long-haul optical fibre communications systems. In section 2.1.2, it was mentioned
that the dispersion characteristics of optical fibre can be modified by careful design of
the core profile. DCF is designed to have a large negative value of dispersion,
typically around -100 ps/nm·km compared with +17 ps/nm·km for SSMF. Hence
many kilometres of DCF are required to compensate for a typical fibre span.
However, this high value of dispersion can only be achieved at the expense of high
attenuation (around 0.5 dB/km compared to 0.2 dB/km for SSMF) and non-linear
parameter (2.3 compared to 1.22 W-1km-1) [Agrawal 2002]. In a new fibre link the
DCF could be used as part of the transmission fibre. However, in most cases in
which a previously installed link is being upgraded to 10 Gb/s or higher, the DCF will
be installed as reels of fibre at several amplifier sites along the link as shown in
Figure 1b. These fibre reels have significant cost and physical size. Also additional
amplification is required to overcome the significant additional optical loss of the
DCF. The effect of this additional amplification is to reduce the optical signal to
noise ratio at the receiver.
DCF allows the design of long haul DWDM systems using dispersion
management (sometimes known as dispersion mapping) in which the dispersion over
the entire link (the “dispersion map”) is arranged to simultaneously compensate
chromatic dispersion while suppressing nonlinear effects [Zyskind 2002]. DCF can
only exactly compensate for one wavelength however and, in a large DWDM system,
DCF with a dispersion slope matching the transmission fibre must be used. This is
37
difficult for SSMF and the older versions of NZ-DSF which have significant slope.
Hence often additional compensation is required for single or groups of wavelengths,
introducing additional complexity. A “green field” link installation can overcome
these issues by the use of NZ-DSF with a reduced slope design.
An additional drawback is that DCF offers fixed compensation. Thus, the value
of dispersion of DCF modules must be accurately matched to the link and if the link
is altered, varying the compensation is costly and time consuming.
In this section, the disadvantages of DCF have been described. However, it is
certainly true that DCF offers high quality compensation and the ability to manage
dispersion periodically along the link (rather than entirely at the terminals) to mitigate
fibre nonlinearities.
2.2.2. Optical Adaptive Compensators

Several types of optical adaptive dispersion compensators have been
demonstrated. Perhaps the most widely researched device is the chirped fibre Bragg
grating (CFBG). Fibre Bragg gratings are sections of single mode fibre with a
periodically modulated core refractive index. A Bragg grating has maximum
reflection when the grating period is half of the wavelength. So a chirped grating, as
shown in Figure 5, reflects longer wavelengths before shorter wavelengths, creating
dispersion opposite to that of SSMF. The value of dispersion can be tuned by
changing the length of the fibre either by temperature change or mechanical strain.
However as the dispersion is tuned, the centre wavelength of the response is also
changed. Complex control schemes involving the use of temperature and strain are
required to overcome this [Ngo 2003]. Most reported CFBG are for compensation of
a single wavelength channel. Simultaneous compensation of several wavelengths
would be a large advantage. To achieve high tuning range and multiple wavelength
operation, schemes involving multiple CFBG are required. In [Pan 2002], four 40
Gb/s signals were compensated with a tuning range of ±300 ps/nm.
38
Lower Higher
Frequencies Frequencies
Input
Output
Figure 5: Concept of the chirped fibre Bragg grating.
Other optical techniques can compensate for many more channels and offer
greater dispersion tuning range. Various etalon structures have been proposed and
demonstrated. In [Moss 2002] two free space thin film Gires-Tournois etalons were
used to vary dispersion over ±800 ps/nm for multiple channels on a 50 GHz grid,
using temperature tuning. The useable bandwidth of each channel was 25 GHz,
suitable for 10 Gb/s operation. The insertion loss was 4.4 dB due to the free space
optics involved which can be reduced below 3 dB using an all fibre version [Shu
2002].
The virtually imaged phased array is another multiple channel technique using
free space optics [Shirasaki 1997]. In this case, an angled glass etalon angularly
separates the incident wavelengths. Each wavelength takes a different path through
the optics, creating dispersion. A dispersion range of ±2000 ps/nm was measured for
60 channels on a 100 GHz grid. A 10 Gb/s transmission experiment over 110 km
SSMF, showed that the eye could be opened, although no BER or eye opening
penalty measurements were made.
Optical finite impulse response (FIR) filters can be fabricated as planar
lightwave circuits [Bohn 2004] [Madsen 2004]. In contrast to the optical
compensators described above, completely arbitrary filter responses can be obtained
in order to compensate simultaneously for chromatic dispersion as well as other fibre
impairments. In [Bohn 2004], a 6th order FIR filter with 100GHz free-spectral range,
suitable for 40 Gb/s operation, was fabricated using silicon oxynitride (SiON)
waveguides on silicon dioxide. The circuit area was 16 x 12 mm. A dispersion range
39
of ±100 ps/nm was measured. As the filter characteristics are periodic, multiple
channel operation was possible.
The adaptive optical compensators discussed above have limited tuning range of
a few hundred ps/nm. A large number would therefore be required to compensate for
a long-haul link. Hence, except for short links, it must be used as in addition to DCF
not instead of it. They are more suitable for providing fine tuning of dispersion
compensation for individual wavelengths or a group of wavelengths within a
dispersion mapped DWDM system. In addition, adaptive optical compensators tend
to have the same the disadvantages as DCF in terms of cost, physical size and optical
losses.
Figure 6: Typical pulse width variation with distance due to interaction of SPM chirp and
chromatic dispersion, reproduced from [Agrawal 1995].
2.2.3. Chirped Transmission

Chirp, the variation of frequency within a pulse, can be used to mitigate
chromatic dispersion [Agrawal 2002]. Chirp can be introduced by various means, for
example by transmitting high powers into a fibre to induce self-phase modulation (see
section 2.1.4). A single pulse causes the phase to be modulated according to equation
2.14. The frequency variation is then given by:
40
dφ dP
∆f = − = −γ L -(2.15)
dt dt
This causes the leading edge of the pulse (with positive dP/dt) to have a lower
frequency relative to the trailing edge (with negative dP/dt). In the presence of
chromatic dispersion with D > 0, the result is pulse compression as the leading edge
of the pulse is speeded up relative to the trailing edge as shown in Figure 6. This
effect is the basis of soliton systems [Doran 1983]. In a lossless waveguide, the chirp
could be arranged to exactly cancel out chromatic dispersion permitting infinite
transmission. In practice due to the attenuation of the fibre, the signal must be
boosted at regular intervals to maintain approximately the correct power levels. This
limits the use of 10 Gb/s solitons with acceptable amplifier spacing to 200 km over
SSMF although distances up to 2000 km are possible over NZ-DSF or with
dispersion management [Knox 1995]. Dispersion managed solitons (alternatively
known as chirped RZ transmission) are the basis of many submarine systems today
[Menyuk 2002].
Another way of introducing chirp is through the use of a directly modulated laser
(DML): a laser which is modulated by changing the laser drive current. This causes
two effects: adiabatic chirp is due to heating and cooling of the laser as it is switched
on and off, causing ones and zeros to have different frequencies whereas dynamic
chirp is due to changes in the carrier density of the active semiconductor.
Unfortunately in the DML, the dynamic chirp has the wrong sign to overcome
chromatic dispersion in SSMF: The phase change is negatively proportional to power
unlike SPM, leading to pulse broadening [Agrawal 2002]. Thus negative dispersion
fibre is required for significant transmission distances at high bit rates. Even using
negative dispersion fibre, the adiabatic chirp broadens the spectrum, making signals
more susceptible to chromatic dispersion and limiting 10 Gb/s transmission distances
to around 20 km. It is for this reason that all long haul systems for 10 Gb/s and above
use a laser with a continuous wave (CW) output with an external modulator designed
for low chirp.
A recent innovation, the chirp managed laser (CML) has much better
performance over SSMF. It consists of a DML with carefully controlled chirp
41
followed by a narrow band optical bandpass filter. The effect of the filter is to
introduce chirp of the correct sign, increase extinction ratio (by filtering out the
adiabatically chirped logical zeros) and reduce the spectral width. Using the CML,
10 Gb/s transmission has been achieved over 250 km SSMF without any dispersion
compensation [Mahgerefteh 2005].
Introducing chirp is a useful technique in optical communications. However,
without some additional form of compensation it does not allow long haul
transmission distances over SSMF.
2.2.4. Mid-span Phase Conjugation

The technique of mid-span phase conjugation (sometimes known as mid-span
spectral inversion) uses a single non-linear optical element to invert the signal
spectrum at roughly the mid point of the link. Thus the chromatic dispersion of the
second half of the link reverses the effect of the first half. The effect of the phase
conjugation is to turn equation 2.3 into [Gnauck 1997]:
E ′( z , t ) = E * ( z , t ) ⋅ e j [β (2ω′−ω )z −(2ω′−ω )t ] -(2.16)
where ω' is due to the frequency shift which takes place during conjugation and E* is
the conjugate of E. The conjugation is typically performed by four wave mixing in an
optically pumped nonlinear element such as dispersion shifted fibre or semiconductor
amplifier. High pump powers are required. It follows from equation 2.16 that the
wavelength of the signal in the second half of the link is shifted with respect to the
first half. Referring to Figure 3, this means that with SSMF, the ideal compensator
position will not be exactly at the mid point of the link (as the chromatic dispersion
has different values at the two wavelengths) and also that exact compensation can
only be achieved at a single wavelength. Despite this, very long transmission
distances have been achieved for 10 Gb/s DWDM transmission. For example in
[Jansen 2005], 10 Gb/s transmission over 10200 km of SSMF using the RZ-QPSK
format (see section 2.4) was achieved for 22 wavelengths with 50 GHz spacing.
Although mid-span phase conjugation has a long history, being first proposed in
1979 [Yariv 1979] and first demonstrated in 1993 [Watananabe 1993] it has never
been implemented commercially. Although it can achieve long transmission
42
distances with only a single compensating element, it has many drawbacks. As well
as the limited wavelength count discussed above, the need to place the compensator
in an exact location along the link is difficult to achieve in the field and individual
wavelengths can not easily be added or dropped at intermediate points along the link.
However, the concept of mid-span phase conjugation is useful in understanding the
electronic predistortion technique which is discussed in chapter 4 onwards.
2.2.5. Electronic Compensation

Compensation using electronic processing at the terminals (transmitter or
receiver) is an attractive solution. In its simplest form, no change to the transmitting
or receiving optics is required and no optical loss is added. High optical loss
components such as DCF modules can be removed from the link which improves
received OSNR. The compensator can easily be made adaptive thus aiding
installation and network changes. Compensation is also per wavelength, thus
avoiding issues with high dispersion slope fibre in large DWDM systems. The
compensator can be integrated with other terminal functions while adding minimal
additional cost and size.
Despite these advantages, electronic compensation has only recently been of
interest, the main reason being that state of the art optical bit rates have historically
always stretched the performance of the electronics to the limits. For example for
10Gb/s, an analog circuit with around 10GHz bandwidth or an analog to digital
converter operating at 20GSa/s is required. Achieving electronic circuits with
sufficient bandwidth to process optical signals was extremely challenging and hence
only essential signal processing functions such as D-type flip flops were used.
However, due to the rapid development of analog, digital and mixed signal
electronics, this issue has largely been overcome. Adaptive analog filters can be
made cost effectively using SiGe technology for 10 Gb/s [Wedding 1999] and
recently 40 Gb/s [Jiang 2005]. For digital signal processing the converter is the
limiting factor. Integrated circuits containing analog-to-digital and/or digital-to-
analog converters (ADC/DAC) have been demonstrated with conversion speeds of 20
43
to 40 GSa/s [Poulton 2003], [Schvan 2005], [Cheng 2004]. The latest real time
sampling oscilloscopes feature ADC with even higher sample rates (up to 50GSa/s).
In practice, to achieve best performance from electronic compensation the
optical system must be modified. Chapters 3 and 4 will discuss electronic
compensation techniques in detail.
2.3. Determination of the Maximum Transmission

Distance
This section will describe methods for assessing the transmission performance of
a long haul fibre link and the determination of the maximum transmission distance for
a given configuration.
2.3.1. Bit Error Rate

Although many techniques are used to assess overall performance in the
literature, such as eye opening penalty or Q factor, the ultimate test of a
communications system is the bit error rate (BER). This simply indicates the
proportion of transmitted bits which are in error. Eye opening and Q are quicker to
simulate, but the trend does not always match the trend in BER.
Typically very low BER, of the order of 10-12 or lower, are required in
commercial networks. However, the use of forward error correction (FEC) codes in
the latest systems allows the BER requirements to be relaxed considerably. The ITU
standard [ITU 1999] is a Reed Soloman (255, 239) code using a 7% overhead (i.e.
10.0 Gb/s of ‘payload’ data is converted into 10.7 Gb/s after coding) and is able to
correct a 10-5 received BER into 10-15 BER after decoding. Although, the increased
bit rate makes the signal slightly more susceptible to transmission impairments, the
coding gain (i.e. the reduction in OSNR possible for a given target BER) is 6 dB
which can increase transmission distances considerably.
In this thesis, two methods of obtaining BER estimates will be used in
simulations (both are described mathematically in appendix B): Firstly, the semi-
analytical method in which a noise probability density function (PDF) is assumed
based on knowledge of the system characteristics. These PDFs are used to calculate
44
the probability of error. The semi-analytical method has the advantage of speed, but
if incorrect assumptions are made about the noise PDF, inaccurate results will be
obtained. More accurate is the Monte-Carlo method in which white noise is added to
the signal at its source (in an optical simulation this will be at the EDFAs). This
noise propagates through the remaining system and finally threshold detection is used
to estimate the error rate. Determining the error rate can be a slow process as many
bits must be simulated in order to obtain a high confidence level in the BER estimate.
There are methods which reduce the computation time such as importance sampling
[Jeruchim 1984] but these all involve introducing assumptions and therefore potential
inaccuracy.
0
-1
Ideal
-2 Signal
-3
-4
log (BER)
-5
-6 Signal
affected by
-7 distortion
-8
-9
-10
Penalty
-11
-12
Required Required
OSNR 1 OSNR 2
OSNR (dB)
Figure 7: Typical BER against OSNR curves.
Research results in optical communications used to be presented with target

BERs of 10-9 or lower. However, due to the widespread use of FEC coding in optical
communications it has become the norm in recent years to use a target BER of 10-3
when reporting research results. To some extent this is an arbitrary figure – in fact
the ITU standard FEC is capable of operating with received BERs of up to 3 x 10-3.
However, using a 10-3 target BER makes Monte-Carlo a feasible method. This
explains the reason for the use of the semi-analytical technique with target BER of 10-
9
for the (earlier) simulations reported in chapters 3 and 4 and the Monte-Carlo
technique with 10-3 target BER in the (later) simulations of chapters 5 to 7.
45
2.3.2. Required Optical Signal to Noise Ratio

As discussed in section 2.1.1, the OSNR of the link can be improved, within
economic and practical constraints, by increasing launch power per span, selecting
EDFAs with lower noise figure or reducing the span length. Therefore it is useful in
comparing different compensation schemes to have a performance criteria
independent of these amplification parameters. The most widely used such parameter
in optical communications literature is required OSNR for a given BER3. Due to the
use of FEC, the target BER is usually 10-3 in most recent publications. In Figure 7,
typical curves are plotted for BER against OSNR, with the required OSNRs for 10-3
indicated4. This parameter gives information on the sensitivity to noise and the extent
to which the signal has been affected by chromatic dispersion or other distortions. An
important system parameter is the required OSNR at 0 km (without transmission fibre)
often known as the back-to-back sensitivity or back-to-back required OSNR. This
sets the baseline performance before any transmission effects are taken into account.
It is important in comparing modulation formats (see section 2.4) and in the following
discussion on maximum transmission distance.
2.3.3. Maximum Transmission Distance – Linear Case

In the case of linear transmission, the transmission distance is determined by
optical noise and chromatic dispersion. Curve (a) in Figure 8 shows an example of an
uncompensated link. After some transmission distance (estimated in Table 1) the
required OSNR starts to increase due to signal distortion caused by uncompensated
chromatic dispersion. The distance at which the required OSNR increases by a
specified amount (usually 1 or 2 dB) is termed the dispersion tolerance. Line (b)
shows the same link after the addition of an adaptive chromatic dispersion
3
Again this is a fairly recent convention. Publications before (roughly) 2002 typically use received
signal power for a given BER. The signal power was measured either before the photodetector or
before the final EDFA. This technique has the disadvantage that the signal powers quoted are
dependent on the link configuration and so are not comparable between different experiments
(although power penalty figures can be compared).
4
The curves of Figure 7 to Figure 10 are derived from the numerical simulations in this thesis rather
than plotted from equations (with the exception of achievable OSNR which uses equation 2.2). They
are intended to demonstrate the general method used throughout the thesis.
46
compensator (such as those described in section 2.2.2). By adjustment of the

compensator, the required OSNR can be maintained at the back-to-back level for
some distance depending on the design and capabilities of the compensator. Line (c)
shows a link with fixed chromatic dispersion compensation designed for a distance,
Ldesign. Either side of the design distance the required OSNR will increase in a similar
way to the uncompensated case.
(c)
(a) (b)
Acheivable
OSNR
Required OSNR
Dispersion
Tolerance
Back-to-Back
Required OSNR
Design
Transmission Distance Distance
Figure 8: Required OSNR against transmission distance in the linear case showing (a) a typical
uncompensated link (b) a link with adaptive compensation or greater dispersion tolerance and (c)
a link with fixed chromatic dispersion compensation.
In this thesis it is line (b) that we are mainly concerned with – the addition of an
adaptive electronic compensator which will allow low penalty transmission from
back-to-back up to some maximum distance. The actual achievable OSNR for a
given span length, launch power and EDFA noise figure (given by equation 2.2) can
be plotted on the same axes, as in Figure 8). The absolute maximum transmission
distance given by the distance at which the required OSNR and achievable OSNR
lines meet. However, some margin would be required for other impairments in
practice, so often the maximum distance is taken to be that at which the required
47
OSNR rises 1-2 dB above the back-to-back figure. It is also worth noting that fixed
and adaptive compensation can be combined to enable a wider dispersion tolerance as
well as long transmission distance.
Non-Linear
Power Limit
OSNR (dB)
Linear
Power
Limit Acheivable Max. OSNR
OSNR Margin
Linear
Required
OSNR Required OSNR
Pmin Pmax
Launch Power, dBm
Figure 9: Required OSNR against launch power per span for a given transmission distance.
2.3.4. Maximum Transmission Distance – Nonlinear Case

If chromatic dispersion is ideally compensated, optical noise and non-linearity
will limit the transmission distance. In this case the launch power into each span
must be considered. Figure 9 shows the required OSNR (for a given BER) plotted
against launch power per span at a fixed distance. At some power, known as the non-
linear threshold, the required OSNR increases due to non-linear distortion. Also
plotted in Figure 9 is the achievable OSNR for a given amplifier configuration (from
equation 2.2). The left hand intersection of the two curves is the linear limit, the
lowest launch power at which the OSNR is high enough to achieve the target BER.
The right hand intersection is the non-linear limit, the highest launch power at which
the target BER can be achieved due to non-linear distortion. Any launch power
between these two limits can be used at the specified distance. If the linear and non-
48
linear limits are plotted against distance, the maximum transmission distance and the
optimum launch power can be found at the intersection, as in Figure 10. In practice,
many time varying distortions can affect an optical link and a suitable margin is
required. Figure 9 shows the OSNR margin available at the optimum launch power.
Figure 10: Linear and Non-linear limits on transmission distance.
2.4. Modulation Formats for Maximising Transmission

Distance
The majority of current commercial optical transmission links use binary

intensity modulation also known as on-off keying (OOK). This is the most simple
method for coding a signal – in each given bit slot, a logical one is represented as a
high power, a logical zero as a low power, as shown in Figure 4. OOK is widely used
as it is simple to transmit and detect. However, other modulation formats have
advantages such as greater tolerance to dispersion and non-linearity and improved
back-to-back required OSNR compared with OOK. It is therefore important to
review alternative formats which, combined with dispersion compensation, could
help to increase transmission distances. Although there are many categories of
modulation format [Winzer 2006], this discussion will be confined to formats which
49
have received significant attention in the published literature on optical

communications, namely duobinary, differential phase shift keying (DPSK) and
differential quaternary phase shift keying (DQPSK).
In general, information can be encoded on an optical field using amplitude,
phase or polarisation. For each polarisation state, the field amplitude and phase can
be represented on an Argand diagram as shown in Figure 11. OOK uses two field
states {0, +E} to encode a single information bit. After direct (or square law)
detection, the signal is converted to an electric current proportional to the square of
the field. Hence the OOK signal is represented by {0, |E|2} after detection. Although
the axes in Figure 11 have been labeled as real and imaginary, it is important to
understand that there is no reference phase and in reality the logical one could lie
anywhere on a circle of radius E. The other formats exploit both amplitude and phase
to achieve increased performance. However, due to the lack of a phase reference,
some means must be found of determining phase changes.
Im(E) Im(E)
OOK
DPSK
Re(E) Re(E)
Im(E) Im(E)
Duobinary DQPSK
Re(E) Re(E)
Figure 11: Field constellation diagrams of OOK, DPSK, Duobinary and DQPSK.
For each of the formats discussed (with the exception of duobinary), there is a
non-return to zero (NRZ) version and a return to zero (RZ) version. The reason for
using RZ formats is generally improved back-to-back required OSNR and greater
tolerance to nonlinearity. However in general, the bandwidth requirement is doubled
50
by using RZ formats. For this reason, they are more difficult to generate and
compensate by purely electronic means and hence will not be discussed in this thesis.
It is also worth noting that polarisation multiplexing can also be used to increase
the bit rate for given bandwidth. For example, two signals (in any of the above
formats) could be generated at the same wavelength with perpendicular polarisations
and combined for transmission in a single fibre by means of a polarising beam splitter.
This of course requires two transmitters and two receivers as well as the beam
splitters for combining and separating the two signals. There is also the issue of
PMD to consider, which will tend to produce cross talk between the signals.
However, the technique is useful in some cases such as for coherent detection systems
discussed in chapter 4.
2.4.1. Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK)

DPSK achieves a 3 dB reduction in back-to-back required OSNR by representing
using the fields {-E, +E} [Winzer 2006]. As shown in section 2.3.4, a reduction in
back-to-back required OSNR permits high transmission distances by lowering the
linear limit launch power. The reason for the 3 dB improvement is that, for a given
OSNR, the two symbols have greater separation in field amplitude and hence are less
affected by noise. However, after direct detection the two symbols {-E, +E} are
indistinguishable, both appearing as |E|2. Thus differential encoding is required in
which a logical one is represented by a change of state and a logic zero by no change.
In order to detect the phase change at the receiver, a one bit period delay
interferometer and two photodiodes operated in a balanced configuration are required.
In effect, each bit is acting as a phase reference for the following bit.
As well as the back-to-back required OSNR improvement, DPSK also has an
improved dispersion tolerance compared with OOK of between 1.5 and 3 times, with
the higher values being obtained using tight optical filtering [Winzer 2006].
2.4.2. Duobinary
The complexity of the DPSK receiver can be avoided using the duobinary format.
In duobinary, the electric field is modulated in a 3-level scheme {-E, 0, +E}. After
51
detection, the signal appears to be a two level signal {0, |E|2} similar to OOK.
Coding is used to ensure both that the signal can be detected using a conventional
OOK receiver and that the spectral width is minimised.
The logic circuit of a duobinary transmission system is shown in Figure 12 and
an example of coding and decoding is given in Table 2 [Yonenaga 1997]. First the
data is differentially precoded then converted to a three level signal using a tap and
sum circuit. In practice, the tap and sum circuit can be replaced with a low-pass filter
with cut-off frequency of one quarter of the bit rate [Ono 1998]. At the receiver, the
square law detector converts the 3 level signal back to 2 levels. The reason for the
narrow bandwidth can be observed from the table: transmitted ones (from the output
of the tap and sum circuit) shift phase only for ones separated by an odd number of
zero bits, thus eliminating {1, 0, 1} and {-1 0 -1} sequences, replacing them with the
much smoother {-1, 0, 1} and {1, 0, -1} sequences.
Binary Transmitter Receiver Binary
Input Duobinary Output
{0, 1} {-1, 0, 1} Square {0, 1}
Subtract
+ Law
1
Detector
T T
Precoder Tap and Sum
(Filter)
Figure 12: Logic diagram of duobinary transmission
It can be observed from Figure 13 that the duobinary signal has a lower
bandwidth than an NRZ-OOK for a given bit rate. Hence, from equation 8, it should
be less affected by chromatic dispersion. This is demonstrated by Figure 14 in which
the dispersion tolerance of 10.7 Gb/s duobinary is shown to be ±185 km SSMF
compared with ±70 km for NRZ-OOK at the expense of increased back-to-back
required OSNR. Although in practice the exact value of dispersion tolerance in both
cases is very sensitive to the optical and electrical bandwidths applied. It can also be
observed in Figure 14 that the minimum required OSNR for duobinary is found at
approximately ±90 km compared to the zero dispersion point. Figure 13 and Figure
14 were both obtained from the simulations described in chapter 5.
52
0
Duobinary
-5 NRZ-OOK
-10
-15
Power, dBm
-20
-25
-30
-35
-40
-45
-50
-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
Frequency, GHz
Figure 13: 10.7 Gb/s Duobinary and NRZ-OOK spectra both with -3 dBm compared using 0.2
nm resolution bandwidth.
12.5
12
± 185 km
11.5
Required OSNR, dB
11
± 70 km
10.5
10
9.5
Duobinary
9 NRZ-OOK
8.5
-200 -160 -120 -80 -40 0 40 80 120 160 200
Chromatic Dispersion, km of SSMF
Figure 14: Comparison of the dispersion tolerances of 10.7 Gb/s duobinary and NRZ-OOK over
SSMF.
53
Table 2
Example bit pattern transmitted by the duobinary logic circuit (x = don’t care)
Operation Bit Pattern
Input X 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1
Inverter X 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
Precoder 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0
Tap and Sum X 0 1 0 -1 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 -1
Detected Value X 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1
2.4.3. Differential Quaternary Phase Shift Keying (DQPSK)

Another approach to increasing dispersion tolerance by reducing the bandwidth
for a given bit rate is to employ multiple level modulation formats. For example,
transmission of 2-bits (4-levels per symbol) at 5 GBaud gives an effective bit rate of
10 Gb/s but with a reduced signal bandwidth. However, the use of multiple level
amplitude modulation formats has been shown to be unsuitable due to the high back-
to-back required OSNR of these formats [Walklin 1999]. One format that has
received considerable recent interest is differential quaternary phase shift keying
(DQPSK). In this scheme, four points on the constellation diagram are used in order
to transmit two bits in each symbol period. The effect of this is to narrow the
spectrum for a given bit rate, hence increasing dispersion tolerance. As with DPSK,
the phase uncertainty must be resolved. In the case of DQPSK, differential encoding
as well as two delay interferometers and four photodiodes in the receiver are required.
The back-to-back required OSNR falls between DSPK and OOK and the chromatic
dispersion tolerance is around 3 times higher than OOK for a given bit rate [Winzer
2006].
54
2.5. The Mach-Zehnder Modulator
The key to producing the above modulation formats and some of the electronic
compensation techniques described in this thesis is the Mach-Zehnder modulator
(MZM), shown in Figure 15a. In this device, the incoming light is split into two
equal parts which travel through waveguides constructed from an electro-optic
material, usually Lithium Niobate. Voltages applied to the electrodes change the
refractive index and hence the phase of one path relative to the other. Therefore, the
light at the output can combine constructively or destructively. The transfer function
of the MZM in terms of field is [Agrawal 2002]:
Ein  jπd1  Ein  jπd 2 

Eout = exp  + exp  -(2.17)
2  Vπ  2  Vπ 
where Ein and Eout are the input and output field vectors, d1 and d2 are the two applied
voltages and Vπ is the modulator switching voltage. To generate OOK, DPSK and
duobinary, push-pull operation is employed with d1 = -d2. The transfer function then
becomes:
 πd 
Eout = Ein cos  1  -(2.18)
 Vπ 
and after square law detection the current is:
2  π ⋅ d1 
I = Eout ⋅ Eout
*
= Ein cos 2   -(2.19)
 Vπ 
The field and power responses are shown in Figure 16 along with the bias point and
swing voltages required for OOK, DPSK and Duobinary.
Generation of DQPSK requires the more complex Cartesian MZM structure
shown in Figure 15b to generate the four field points. This is in effect an IQ
modulator as commonly used in radio systems. It can generate any arbitrary
amplitude or phase. d1 controls the real part of the transmitted signal and d2 controls
the imaginary part. Its transfer function is given by:
Ein   π ⋅ d1   π ⋅ d 2 
Eout = sin   + j ⋅ sin   -(2.20)
2   Vπ   Vπ 
55
d1
d1
C.W. Modulated MZM
Input Output
MZM π/2
d2
d2
(a) (b)
Figure 15: The Mach-Zehnder modulator (a) dual drive and (b) Cartesian
It can be observed from the transfer function, that the optical field modulation is
approximately linear provided that |d1|<<0.5Vπ and |d2|<<0.5Vπ. In addition to the
generation of advanced modulation formats, the MZM is also crucial to the electronic
predistortion technique which is discussed in chapters 4 to 7 and is also used for
single sideband signal generation, discussed in chapter 4.
DPSK, Duobinary
OOK
1
Field Amplitude
-1
1
Power Output
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Drive Voltage/Vpi
Figure 16: Dual drive MZM field and power transfer functions.
56
2.6. Summary of Chromatic Dispersion Compensation

and Mitigation
In this chapter, the transmission impairments affecting long-haul communication

over single mode fibre have been described. It has been shown that optical noise,
chromatic dispersion and fibre nonlinearity ultimately limit the possible transmission
distance. However, chromatic dispersion has the greatest effect on signals at 10 Gb/s
or above as, without compensation or mitigation, the maximum transmission distance
with zero ISI is 52 km or less. In current commercial systems, dispersion mapping
using periodic chromatic dispersion compensation using DCF is the most widely used
long haul transmission technique. This allows high quality chromatic dispersion
compensation while mitigating fibre nonlinear effects in DWDM operation. The
drawbacks of using DCF and dispersion mapping were pointed out, namely the high
cost, optical loss and physical size as well as the inflexibility and difficulty of
installation due to the fixed nature of DCF. The other optical techniques reviewed
were not found to reverse these disadvantages. It was stated that compensation by
electronic processing at the terminals has the potential to overcome these
disadvantages and this is explored in the rest of the thesis.
57
3. Electronic Dispersion Compensation for
IM/DD Systems
From a commercial point of view, the most attractive implementation of
electronic compensation would be one that could be added to the terminals of an
existing optical link without any modification to the optical components. This
chapter addresses that possibility.
The vast majority of current optical communications links are intensity
modulated direct detection (IM/DD) systems. This means that the transmitter uses
the OOK format (see chapter 1) encoding logical ones and zeros by variation of
optical intensity or power and the receiver is a square law detector (often described in
optics as a direct detector to distinguish it from a coherent detector) usually a PIN
photodiode or avalanche photodiode. Therefore, the compensator in this case would
operate on the detected electrical current.
In section 0, common equalisers used in other forms of digital communications
are described and the existing literature on their use in optical communication is
reviewed. Next (section 3.2), the results of simulations and experiments are
described using two such equalisers: Feed-forward and Decision Feedback. The
maximum transmission distance using only these equalisers for chromatic dispersion
compensation is determined. It is shown that, for 10 Gb/s links, the increase in
transmission distance is only a factor of two compared with uncompensated links.
Finally, the reasons for this limitation are discussed in section 3.3.
3.1. Common Equalisers used in Digital

Communication
3.1.1. Feed-forward Equaliser

The feed-forward equaliser (FFE), also referred to as a tapped delay line filter, is
a linear filter without feedback. An example of a 5-tap analog FFE is shown in
Figure 17. The FFE has a response given by:
58
Chapter 3 - EDC for IM/DD Systems
y (t ) = ∑k =0 ck ⋅ x(t − [k ⋅ ∆t ])
N −1
-(3.1)
where ck are the variable tap weights, N is the number of FFE taps, x(t) is the input at
time t and ∆t is the time delay between the taps. It can be observed that the output is
simply a weighted sum of the input sampled at intervals of ∆t. Therefore it has a
finite impulse response5, having no memory outside the time period ∆t.(N-1). The
number of taps, N, is the number of weighted samples which are summed to derive
the output. The order of the filter is N-1. A time delay between taps of one bit period
is sufficient to compensate for ISI, although an FFE with lower time delays, known as
a fractionally spaced equaliser, has advantages such as more accurate control over the
receiver response (matched filtering) [Benedetto 1987].
Input
T/2 T/2 T/2 T/2
c0 c1 c2 c3 c4
X X X X X
+
Output
Figure 17: A 5-tap feed-forward equaliser.
In electrical communication, the FFE taps are adjusted to produce a matched

filter response, which is the inverse of the communications channel response. One
important issue with the FFE is that of noise enhancement. In [Winters 1990], an
expression for the relative SNR at the output of an FFE, assuming that the noise at
each tap output is an independent variable, is given:
5
A finite impulse response (FIR) filter can be implemented in either analog or digital form. In this
chapter, the analog form is used as the integrated circuit used in experiments was analog. In later work
described in chapters 6 and 7, the digital form is used. Analog FIR filters are usually referred to as
FFE or tapped delay line filters whereas digital versions are simply referred to as FIR filters. This
terminology will be followed in the thesis.
59
I eye
ρ= -(3.2)
N −1
∑c
k =0
2
k
where Ieye is the eye opening amplitude. This shows that there is a trade off between
the benefit of distortion correction (measured by eye opening in numerator) and the
additional noise added by the FFE (denominator).
3.1.2. Decision Feedback Equaliser

Unlike the FFE, the decision feedback equaliser (DFE) is suitable for
compensating non-linear impairments. An example of a single stage DFE is shown in
Figure 18. It works by subtracting a proportion of previous decisions, controlled by
the coefficients dk, from the incoming signal. In this way it can compensate for post-
cursor ISI but has no effect on precursor ISI. DFE sections can be cascaded to
compensate for ISI from several previously detected bits. In general the feedback
path can contain an additional linear filter. However, as this is very difficult to
implement at high bit rates, only the simple DFE shown in Figure 18 will be
considered in this thesis.
As the feedback is the previously detected bit, the DFE adds negligible
additional noise to the signal, unlike the FFE. However if the detected bit is in error,
the feedback will also be incorrect, possibly causing further errors [Benedetto 1987].
This ‘error propagation’ is frequently ignored in simulations of the DFE leading to
slightly optimistic results.
Clock
Input from Recovery
optical detector
Decision Output
+
Circuit
x
d0
Figure 18: The decision feedback equaliser.
60
3.1.3. Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation

Maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) is another technique that is
well known in digital communications theory, being described as the optimum
receiver configuration [Benedetto 1987]. The MLSE algorithm works on sequences
of bits. For example, in Figure 19, four 3-bit sequences are shown before and after
100 km SSMF transmission. It is important to note that although the received
waveforms are badly distorted, they are predictable given a knowledge of the effect of
chromatic dispersion. Therefore, we can determine from the received waveforms
which of the possible bit sequences was transmitted.
TRANSMITTED RECEIVED
1 .5 1 .5
1 1
010 0 .5 0 .5
0 0
0 0 .5 1 .1
5 2 .2
5 3 0 .0 5 1 1 .5 2 2 .5 3
1 .5 1 .5
1 1
011 0 .5 0 .5
0 0
0 0 .5 1 .1
5 2 .2
5 3 0 .0 5 1 1 .5 2 2 .5 3
1 .5 1 .5
1 1
110 0 .5 0 .5
0 0
0 0 .5 1 .1
5 2 .2
5 3 0 .0 5 1 1 .5 2 2 .5 3
1 .5 1 .5
1 1
111 0 .5 0 .5
0 0
0 0 .5 1 .1
5 2 .2
5 3 0 .0 5 1 1 .5 2 2 .5 3
Figure 19: {010}, {110}, {011}, {111} transmitted sequences and received waveforms after 100 km
of SSMF.
Hence, one analog implementation is to find the cross-correlation function of

each expected received waveform, sk(t), with the incoming waveform, y(t), as shown
in Figure 20. In addition to signal distortion y(t) will also contain noise. However,
the most likely transmitted sequence will be reliably given by the highest cross-
correlation function. The number of correlators required will be 2N, where N is the
length of the bit sequence considered or the processor memory. This demonstrates
61
the key disadvantage of MLSE for chromatic dispersion compensation: the

complexity of the algorithm scales exponentially with pulse spreading.
3T
x ∫
0
s1(t)
3T
Input from optical

x ∫ Decision Most Likely
detector, y(t) s2(t)
0
Circuit Sequence
3T
x ∫0
s3(t)
Figure 20: A possible analog MLSE implementation using correlators.
MLSE can also be implemented in digital form as shown in Figure 21. The
incoming signal is first converted to digital form. A Viterbi algorithm [Proakis 2001]
is used to find the most likely sequence using the information stored in the channel
estimator. The expected waveforms are found by the channel estimator by comparing
the raw digital signals with the recovered bit sequence.
Input from Most likely
optical detector sequence
Viterbi
ADC Decoder
Clock
Recovery
Channel
Estimator
Figure 21: Digital implementation of MLSE.
62
3.1.4. Published Literature on the Effect of Equalisers in Optical

Communications
Analog FFE and DFE with broadband responses have been fabricated in SiGe
integrated circuits for 10 Gb/s [Wedding 1999] and more recently 40 Gb/s [Jiang
2005]. Another example of a 10 Gb/s device is the Intel integrated circuit
demonstrated in the experiments of section 3.2.3 which has a 5-tap FFE cascaded
with a 2 stage DFE. Typically the numbers of FFE taps and DFE stages are low due
to the difficulty of fabricating repeatable broadband devices at these frequencies.
The literature on the use of FFE and DFE in optical impairment mitigation is
reviewed together as in most cases these equalisers have been used together. In
optical communications, FFE and DFE devices have been shown to compensate
effectively for various impairments including multi-mode dispersion [Zhao 2002],
polarisation mode dispersion [Schlump 1998] [Haunstein 2004], laser chirp
[Cartledge 1992], restricted receiver bandwidth [Kanter 2003] and self phase
modulation [Otte 2000]. Specifically on chromatic dispersion compensation, there is
only one experimental investigation of performance [Buchali 2000] in which an
integrated 8-tap FFE and single stage DFE circuit was shown to reduce the power
penalty due to chromatic dispersion by 2.0 dB and 3.3 dB at 102 and 127 km SSMF
respectively. Simulations in [Otte 1999] show a 6dB OSNR sensitivity improvement
for linear equalisation, 9dB for a 1 stage DFE, 9.5dB for a 2 stage DFE, compared
with the uncompensated case after 130km of SSMF. In a further paper by the same
authors [Otte 2000], a 45% increase in dispersion tolerance, for a 1 dB eye opening
penalty, was demonstrated in simulation using a single stage DFE. An increased
improvement (approximately 206%) was found by adding a 4-tap FFE. In all
reported simulations, adding a second DFE stage had no significant improvement.
In [Färbert 2004], results were presented using the first 10.7 Gb/s MLSE
integrated circuit using the digital implementation with Viterbi decoder (Figure 21).
The device used a 3 bit resolution, 25GSa/s ADC with 2-bit processor memory
Viterbi processor. The results at 10.7 Gb/s showed a dispersion tolerance of 2250
ps/nm, equivalent to 136 km SSMF for a 2 dB OSNR penalty and BER of between
10-3 and 10-6. Using the same integrated circuit it was shown that the dispersion
63
tolerance of optical duobinary transmission could be increased from 3500 ps/nm to

4500 ps/nm allowing transmission over 250 km of SSMF [Elbers 2005]. More
recently, a 10.7 Gb/s MLSE integrated circuit with 4-bit processor memory was
demonstrated [Kupfer 2008], however no increase in the 2 dB penalty dispersion
tolerance was possible with this device.
In general, MLSE is capable of much greater transmission distances. For
example, in [Poggiolini 2006], transmission over 1040 km of uncompensated
standard SMF was demonstrated by sampling the received waveform with an ADC
and performing the MLSE algorithm offline. The penalty compared with back-to-
back using a 13-bit processor memory was only 3.2 dB, however a Viterbi algorithm
of this size can not be implemented in real time with current technology. It is
therefore, the complexity of the Viterbi algorithm, scaling as 2N, which limits the
transmission distances achievable. The continuing increase in CMOS processing
power will certainly increase achievable MLSE transmission distances in future
though. In addition, research is ongoing into simplifying and adapting MLSE for
optical use. An interesting example was given in [Savory 2007] in which 1040 km of
standard SMF was compensated with only 3.2 dB penalty using a simplified
algorithm and 1 Sa/b processing by using a low pass electrical filter of 4 GHz before
the ADC. This technique works because MLSE is also capable of compensating for
excessive low pass filtering as well as chromatic dispersion.
In summary, MLSE is a powerful technique but the complexity of the algorithm
scales exponentially with chromatic dispersion, making it unlikely that long haul
operation without some other form of additional compensation will be possible. FFE
and DFE use much less complex analog technology. Although some benefit has been
shown, there are many gaps in the published literature on the use of FFE and DFE for
chromatic dispersion compensation. In particular, there are no experimental results
covering the whole useful range of transmission distances and simulation results have
not been reported for different FFE and DFE configurations. Hence, neither the
fundamental limits of this technology nor the optimum number of FFE taps or DFE
stages can be found. These aspects have been investigated in this thesis work and are
described in the following section.
64
3.2. Limits of Feed-forward and Decision Feedback

Equalisers for Compensating Chromatic Dispersion
3.2.1. IM/DD Transmission with FFE and DFE: Simulation Model

Semi-analytical simulations were carried out to determine the performance limits
and the optimum number of FFE taps and DFE sections. The simulations were
performed using custom MATLAB code. Code for optical transmission was written
by Dr Robert Killey and modified by the author where required. Code for modeling
the FFE and DFE and semi-analytical BER estimation was written by the author. A
block diagram of the simulation used in this work is shown in Figure 22. To isolate
the effect of the FFE and DFE in overcoming chromatic dispersion, fibre nonlinearity,
chirp and polarisation mode dispersion were not included in the model.
Zero Chirp
M-Z
Fixed LPF Error
Laser FFE +
+ (9GHz) Detector
Chromatic DFE
Dispersion
Only
10 Gb/s Signal-ASE
27-1 Beat Noise
(Gaussian
PRBS Approximation)
Figure 22: Block diagram of the simulation of 10 Gb/s transmission using FFE and DFE
equalisers [Watts 2005 A].
A Mach-Zehnder modulator, biased as described in section 2.5, was used to

generate a 10.0 Gb/s NRZ-OOK signal with 16 dB extinction ratio. The modulating
data was a 27 DeBruijn sequence filtered with a 4th order Bessel filter with 10 GHz
cutoff frequency. Chromatic dispersion was modeled using the transfer function
given in equation 2.8.
The semi-analytic technique for calculating BER was used (as described in
Appendix B-2) and the performance criterion used was the required OSNR (measured
in a bandwidth of 0.1 nm) to obtain a BER of 10-9.
65
In the semi-analytic technique values of signal amplitude, xj, and noise standard
deviation, σj, are calculated for each simulation point at the photodetector output.
These values are then modified by the models used for the FFE and DFE. For the
FFE (Figure 23a) the signal output is given by:
y = ∑cj ⋅ xj -(3.3)
j
where cj are the tap multiplier coefficients. To find the noise output, the correlation
between values of σ on each tap must be considered. The autocorrelation function of
white Gaussian noise when filtered is given by [Carlson 2002]:
R(τ ) = F H(f )
N o −1
2
[2
] -(3.4)
where No is the noise spectral density and H(f) is the frequency domain filter response.
The autocorrelation using a 4th order low pass Bessel6 response is shown in Figure
23b for various cut-off frequencies. The important issue in determining the FFE
noise output is the correlation at multiples of the tap spacing. All the FFEs used in
this work had tap spacing of approximately half the bit period (Δt ≈ 50 ps for 10
Gb/s). It can be observed from Figure 23b that for the Bessel filter, correlation is low
for the two adjacent taps, ±50 ps, and essentially zero for all other taps. Hence, the
assumption was made that the noise in each tap is independent. It was further
assumed that the FFE added no noise (beyond the noise enhancement). In this case:
σ out = ∑c σ
j
2
j
2
j -(3.5)
For agreement with the experiments, 9 GHz receiver electrical bandwidth was used in
all simulations. Good agreement was found between simulations and experiments
using this simple noise model. If low bandwidth filters (≤ 6 GHz) are used, this
simple noise model may need modification to take account of correlation between
noise samples.
6
In [Watts 2005 A] the author showed the autocorrelation function of Butterworth filtered Gaussian
white noise. As the Butterworth filter has a sharp cutoff, its autocorrelation has a characteristic similar
to that of an ideal filter, i.e. a sinc funtion. The nulls are at multiples of ±(1/2B), where B is the low
pass cut-off frequency. In this work the author argued that there is little correlation between taps if the
receiver bandwidth is near to 10 GHz. In fact, the Bessel filter which is much more widely used in
communication receivers has lower correlation for 50 ps spaced taps across a range of bandwidths.
66
x0, σ 0 x1, σ1 x2, σ 2 1
Normalised Autocorrelation Function

T/2 T/2 10 GHz
0.8 8 GHz
c0 c1 c2 6 GHz
X X X 0.6
0.4
0.2
+ 0
y, σout -150 -100 -50 0 50 100 150
Time, ps
(a) (b)
Figure 23: FFE simualtion model (a) FFE diagram showing signal and noise terms and (b) the
normalised autocorellation function of white Gaussian noise after low pass filtering with cut-off
frequencies of 6, 8 and 10 GHz
In both simulations and experiments, the values of cj were optimised to achieve

the lowest BER using a maximum rate of descent method. The maximum rate of
descent method was found to be more effective in minimising BER than common text
book methods such as least mean squares or zero forcing [Proakis 2001. These
techniques will work to maximise the eye opening but do not necessarily minimise
BER. When using the FFE alone, due to the symmetrical nature of chromatic
dispersion, the start point for optimisation was to set:
c N +1 = 1
2 -(3.6)
call = 0
The central tap, c(N+1/2) was not adjusted during optimisation.
The DFE was assumed to add no additional noise to the signal. Hence, for signal
and noise input, x and σ, the signal and noise at the decision circuit input is given by:
yD = x + d k ⋅ b
-(3.7)
σD =σ
where dk is the feedback coefficient and b is +0.5 if the last bit was detected as a one
and -0.5 if the last bit was detected as a zero.
In the simulations and experiments, it was found that starting FFE optimisation
with:
67
cN −1 = 1
cothers = 0 -(3.8)
d all = 0
and optimising the FFE and DFE simultaneously was more effective than optimising
FFE and DFE independently. In this configuration the FFE is used to compensate
precursor ISI (caused by subsequent bits) while the DFE compensates postcursor ISI
(caused by previous bits).
For several optimisations in simulation, a crude search was performed of the
whole space {cj, dk} in order to check that the tap weights found by the maximum rate
of descent method did indeed give a global minimum BER.
3.2.2. Simulation Results Investigating Optimum FFE and DFE

Configuration and Maximum Transmission Distances
The simulated performance of various FFE and DFE configurations is shown in
Figure 24. The FFE produced a 1.5 dB back-to-back sensitivity improvement
compared with the uncompensated case, due to optimisation of the receiver response.
As the distance was increased above 60 km, the gain that can be achieved with the
FFE over the uncompensated case was increased, demonstrating that chromatic
dispersion mitigation was taking place although full compensation was not achieved
as there was a penalty compared with the back-to-back required OSNR. The addition
of a single DFE section had benefit at ranges above 100 km. A single DFE stage
without the FFE also had a benefit over the uncompensated case above 100 km,
although there was no back-to-back improvement. For the 9-tap FFE and 1 stage
DFE, the transmission distance for a 2 dB penalty (taking the uncompensated back-
to-back required OSNR as the reference) was increased from 70 km to 112 km.
68
30
29 Uncompensated
28 5-tap FFE
27 9-tap FFE
26
Required OSNR, dB
13-tap FFE
25
24 9-tap FFE + 1stage DFE
23 1 stage DFE Only

22
Single Span OSNR with 0 dBm
21 Launch Power
20
19
18
17
16
15
14
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160
Standard SMF Transmission Distance, km
Figure 24: Simulated performance of various FFE and DFE configurations [Watts 2005 A].
The back-to-back improvement can be explained by examining the optimised 5-

tap FFE characteristics in Figure 25. The amplitude response in the frequency
domain when the FFE is optimised for minimum BER showed a low pass response
with amplification at low frequencies. This was implemented by setting two adjacent
taps to high values, with the other taps set near zero. To a certain extent the
minimum BER was obtained because the FFE optimised the low pass filtering of the
receiver. However, this can not fully explain the improvement as with any receiver
bandwidth there was still a back-to-back gain using the FFE. This is explained by
referring to equations 3.3 and 3.5: it can be observed that if two adjacent taps are set
high, the average signal level is doubled, but the average noise is only increased by
√2. This accounts for the remaining improvement in BER. From the eye diagrams in
Figure 25, it can be observed that although the eye is still open after the FFE, the
timing margin or jitter tolerance is reduced. The simulation takes the BER at the
ideal decision point. In practice therefore there is an engineering trade-off to make.
The same back-to-back improvement was found experimentally, although it was not
possible to examine the experimental eye as the direct output of the FFE (before the
clock/data recovery circuit) was not accessible.
69
2.0 1.0
1.6 0.8
Amplitude
Tap Weights
1.2 0.6
0.8 0.4
0.4 0.2
0.0
0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 1 2 3 4 5
-0.2
Frequency, GHz
(a) (b)
0km 0km
2 2
1.8 1.8
1.6 1.6
1.4
Amplitude, arb
Amplitude, arb
1.4
1.2 1.2
1 1 1 1
0.8 0.8
0.6 0.6
0.4
0.4
0.2
0.2
0 0 0 0
- 0.2
- 0.2 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
Time, ps Time, ps
(c) (d)
Figure 25: Back-to-back optimised FFE characteristics (a) amplitude response (b) tap weights (c)
eye diagram without FFE (d) eye diagram with FFE optimised for minimum BER [Watts 2005
A].
In the presence of significant chromatic dispersion, the optimised responses are

shown in Figure 26 for both the 5-tap and 13-tap FFE. In all cases, the optimum filter
emphasised the signal in the 3 to 6 GHz range. This mitigated ISI by making
transitions as fast as possible (10101 sequence is approximately a 5GHz sine wave).
The group delay responses were relatively flat. The 13-tap FFE allowed greater
emphasis of the transition frequency as well as a flatter group delay response.
70
3.0 0.7
100km 100km
2.5 0.6
120km 120km
0.5
Group Delay, ns
2.0 140km 140km
Amplitude
0.4
1.5
0.3
1.0
0.2
0.5
0.1
0.0 0.0
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0
Frequency, GHz Frequency, GHz
(a)
3.0 0.7
100km 100km
0.6
2.5
120km 120km
0.5
Group Delay, ns
2.0 140km 140km
Amplitude
0.4
1.5
0.3
1.0
0.2
0.5 0.1
0.0 0.0
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0
Frequency, GHz Frequency, GHz
(b)
Figure 26: Optimised FFE characteristics in the presence of significant chromatic dispersion for
(a) the 5-tap FFE and (b) the 13-tap FFE.
In order to find the optimum configuration for overcoming chromatic dispersion,

Figure 27 shows the effect of varying the number of FFE taps at various SSMF
transmission distances. For the FFE alone, increasing the number of taps from 5 to
13, gave 3 dB sensitivity improvement. However, for the FFE and DFE combination,
there was no significant advantage in using more than 5 FFE taps. Adding additional
DFE sections did not improve the performance significantly at the transmission
distances considered in this simulation. Hence, it can be concluded that the 5-tap FFE
and 1-stage DFE combination is optimum for overcoming chromatic dispersion in
terms of the performance against complexity trade-off.
71
48 48
Required OSNR, dB 44 (a) 44 (b)
Required OSNR, dB
40 40
36 36
32 32
28 28
24 24
20 20
16 16
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
No. of FFE taps No. of FFE taps
100 km 120 km 140 km 160 km
Figure 27: Effect of the number of FFE taps on chromatic dispersion compensation (a) FFE
alone (b) FFE combined with a 1-stage DFE [Watts 2005 A].
Table 3
Maximum single span transmission distances for various FFE and DFE configurations
Configuration Maximum Single Span

Range (km)
Uncompensated 125
5-tap FFE 138
9-tap FFE 141
13-tap FFE 144
1-stage DFE only 140
5-tap FFE + 1-stage DFE 156
In commercial optical transmission systems there is pressure to reduce the

number of amplifier sites in order to reduce maintenance costs. Therefore, it is
interesting for metropolitan systems to find the maximum single span range. This is
the maximum distance that can be achieved with no mid-span amplification
(amplification is at the transmitter and receiver only). The maximum single span
72
range can be achieved using an optically preamplified receiver, in which the OSNR at
the detector depends on the transmission power and the noise figure of the receiver
EDFA. The OSNR that can be obtained (using equation 2.2) with a launch power of
0 dBm, fibre loss of 0.2 dB/km and 5 dB EDFA noise figure is plotted in Figure 24.
On this basis, a 5-tap FFE allows a maximum single span range of 138 km SSMF,
while 5-tap FFE with a single stage DFE allows 156 km. Table 3 summarises the
results for each configuration.
The launch power of 0 dBm used in both simulations and experiments was
chosen to avoid distortion due to fibre nonlinear effects. This was justified by
calculation of the phase shift using equation 2.14, where the length, L, was replaced
by the effective length for nonlinear interaction in the presence of attenuation, zeff,
given by equation B.3 (in appendix 3). By this method, assuming an 80 km span
length and fibre nonlinear parameter, γ = 1.2 W-1km-1, the nonlinear phase shift is
only 26 mrad for 0 dBm.
3.2.3. Experimental Confirmation of Increased Transmission

Distance using FFE and DFE
10Gb/s transmission experiments were carried out to verify the simulation results.
The experimental arrangement is shown in Figure 28. The transmitter used a tunable
laser and a Mach-Zehnder modulator, driven by a 10 Gb/s PRBS of length 231-1. The
resulting NRZ optical signal had an extinction ratio of over 10 dB. The fibre link
consisted of up to 140 km of SSMF in one or two EDFA amplified spans. Two spans
were required in order to measure the sensitivity with the FFE alone at 140 km. The
maximum OSNR obtainable with 140 km in a single span in this experiment (span 1
= 0 km, span 2 = 140 km) was 26.7 dB. The launch power into each span was
maintained at 0 dBm to avoid distortion due to fibre non-linearity. At the receiver, an
EDFA, a variable optical attenuator and coupler were used to control the OSNR at the
detector. OSNR was measured in a 0.1 nm resolution bandwidth. A bandpass optical
filter removed out of band amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise before the
avalanche photodiode (APD) detector. A constant optical signal power of -18.5 dBm
was maintained at the detector, ensuring that ASE noise dominated over all other
73
noise sources. The EDC integrated circuit contained a 5-tap FFE, clock/data recovery
(CDR) and a 2 stage DFE. The circuit layout allowed the use of either the FFE alone
(with CDR) or the FFE and DFE together. To assess performance, the required
OSNR for a BER of 10-9 was measured.
80:20 Variable Tunable

EDFA EDFA Coupler Optical Optical
SSMF SSMF Attenuator Filter
Mach- 10Gb/s Variable Optical

Zehnder Pattern
EDFA Optical Spectrum
Modulator Generator Attenuator Analyser
Tuneable
Laser Data
Error FFE/DFE Avalanche
Detector + CDR Photodiode
Clock
Optical ck , dj
Electrical PC and
DAC
Figure 28: Transmission experiment for the investigation of FFE and DFE in overcoming
chromatic dispersion [Watts 2005 A].
The OSNR sensitivity measurements are plotted (points) on Figure 29 along with
the simulation results (lines) for the uncompensated, 5-tap FFE, and 5-tap FFE with
DFE cases7. In general, the experimental results agreed well with the simulations.
The difference between the simulation and experimental results for the FFE and DFE
combined at 116.3 km and 140.0 km, can partly be explained by the difference in
PRBS length (27 for simulations, 231 – 1 for experiments). Using a 27 – 1 sequence
length in the experiments resulted in required OSNR values of 19.6 dB and 21.8 dB at
ranges of 116.3 km and 140.0 km respectively. These values are much closer to the
simulated figures. At shorter ranges, the PRBS length had no significant effect.
Once again, the single span OSNR that can be obtained (using a typical 0 dBm
launch power and 5 dB amplifier launch power) is also plotted on Figure 29. The
FFE and DFE combination required an OSNR of 22.7 dB (231 – 1 sequence length)
7
To enable like-to-like comparison of simulated and experimental results, the simulated result for 5-
tap FFE and 2-stage DFE is shown in Figure 29. However, there is no significant difference between
this and the 5-tap FFE and 1-stage DFE result shown in Figure 24.
74
after 140 km SSMF, thus allowing a 140 km single span with 4 dB of OSNR margin.
At this transmission distance, uncompensated transmission was not possible.
30
Uncompensated Simulated
28 5-tap FFE Simulated
5-tap FFE + 2 stage DFE Simulated
26
Required OSNR, dB
Single Span OSNR (0dBm launch power)

Uncompensated Experimental
24 5-tap FFE Experimental
5-tap FFE + 2 stage DFE Experimental
22
20
18
16
14
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Standard SMF Transmission Distance, km
Figure 29: Experimental results (points) with simulation results (lines) for uncompensated, 5-tap
FFE and 5-tap FFE with DFE cases [Watts 2005 A].
3.3. Equalisers for IM/DD Systems – Discussion and

Conclusions
The effectiveness of overcoming chromatic dispersion using FFE and DFE

equalisers in the receiver of an IM/DD link has been investigated in the previous
section. An increase in the 10 Gb/s transmission distance (for a 2 dB OSNR penalty)
from 70 km to 112 km SSMF was demonstrated using a 5-tap FFE and single stage
DFE. The maximum transmission distance without mid-span amplification was
shown to be 156 km SSMF using the same FFE and DFE configuration. In practice,
the exact values of performance improvement are very dependent on the optical and
electrical filter bandwidths and launch powers assumed. However, the results
presented show that FFE and DFE devices can give a useful improvement in
transmission distance for relatively short links of the sort used in metropolitan
networks. This could have advantages in terms of reducing cost and improving
flexibility of metropolitan networks, without making major changes to existing
75
optical equipment. For example, a long metropolitan link could be upgraded from 2.5
Gb/s to 10 Gb/s without adding DCF or the number (or operating power) of optical
amplifiers could be reduced.
However this approach does not allow the achievement of long haul transmission
distances without employing some other form of chromatic dispersion compensation,
although the increase in dispersion tolerance made possible by adding FFE and DFE
in the receiver may be useful for optically compensated long haul links.
It was already shown in section 3.2.2 that an optimised FFE mitigates chromatic
dispersion by emphasising the transition frequency at half the bit rate. It does not
provide a compensating filter response which would eliminate the penalty due to
chromatic dispersion.
Optical Electrical
Domain Domain
Signal in fibre described by amplitude,
phase and polarisation state of field
Photocurrent ∝ optical power ∝ |E|2
Amplitude
|E|2
Phase
Frequency
Frequency
Figure 30: The effect of square-law or direct detection on signals affected by chromatic
dispersion [Watts 2005 C].
To investigate the reason why the FFE or any linear filter can not compensate for
chromatic dispersion in IM/DD systems, the effect of the direct (or square-law)
detector must be considered. To fully describe the effect of optical transmission in
single mode fibre requires knowledge of the amplitude, phase and polarisation state
of the electric and magnetic fields which make up the optical signal. However, the
direct detector only measures the instantaneous optical power, which is proportional
76
to the magnitude of the electric field squared. Hence the phase and polarisation
information is not necessarily retained.
In the presence of chromatic dispersion, the square law detection process causes
interference between the carrier and the two sidebands, causing severe signal
distortion (Figure 30). To see this mathematically, consider the electric field
produced when a sine wave is intensity modulated onto an optical carrier (the
mathematical notation used in section 1.1.2 will be used). Represented in base-band
the signal can be represented as:
E = A + Be + jωt + Be − jωt -(3.9)
where A and B are the amplitudes of the carrier and sidebands respectively. Here the
first term represents the carrier and the second and third terms are the upper sideband
and lower sideband respectively. After direct detection, the current generated is given
by (ignoring terms with DC or 2ω frequency):
I ∝ E ⋅ E * = E = 2 AB cos(ωt )
2
-(3.10)
Hence, the sine wave is recovered by beating of the carrier with the sidebands.
However, for a signal affected by chromatic dispersion, the generated current is:
 
+ j  ωt +
ω 2 β 2 L 


− j  ωt −
ω 2 β 2 L   


− j  ωt +
ω 2 β 2 L 


+ j  ωt −
ω 2 β 2 L  
2 
P ∝  A + Be  + Be   
⋅ A + Be  + Be  
2  2 2 
-(3.11)
   
   
which after simplifying, leads to:
 ω 2β 2 L 
I ∝ 2 AB cos  cos(ωt ) -(3.12)
 2 
This shows that the amplitude spectrum of a broadband signal will have nulls when:
ω 2 β 2 L = (2n − 1)π for n = 1, 2, 3 …. -(3.13)
At short distances, these nulls will appear at frequencies outside the range of interest.
However, after transmission through 150km of SSMF (β2 = -21.6 ps2/km, equivalent
to 17.0 ps/(nm·km) at 1.55 µm) the first two nulls appear at 5.2GHz and 8.9GHz.
This will severely distort a 10Gb/s signal and it is not possible to design a linear
electrical filter to provide full compensation as no amount of gain at the null points
will restore the signal at these frequencies.
77
The DFE also has a mitigating effect, but can not eliminate the effect of
chromatic dispersion as it can only deal with post-cursor ISI and has no effect on pre-
cursor ISI. As shown in Chapter 1, chromatic dispersion has a symmetrical response,
causing both pre-cursor and post-cursor ISI equally.
MLSE has been shown to be capable of compensating 1000 km SSMF in
principle, but the complexity of the necessary algorithm scales exponentially with the
channel memory. As the current maximum processor memory implemented for 10
Gb/s operation is only 4-bits, it seems unlikely that this technology will enable long
haul transmission without optical compensation in the foreseeable future.
In summary, this chapter has demonstrated that an electronic equaliser added to
an IM/DD system has limited ability to increase transmission distance. This is due to
the fact that information about the optical field in the fibre is not available in the
electronic domain. It is clear that what is required is a modification to the optical
system that will allow the electronics to either control or measure the state of the
optical field. The proposed options for achieving this are discussed in the next
chapter.
78
4. Electronic Dispersion Compensation
Techniques which Operate on the Optical
Field
The previous chapter explained why adding electronic equalisers to an existing
IM/DD system does not greatly increase the transmission distance that can be
achieved without optical compensation. Techniques proposed for overcoming this
problem are reviewed in this chapter. All the techniques involve addition of optical
components to the system to electronically control or measure the optical field in the
fibre. The benefits of each in terms of increased transmission distances against
drawbacks of increased optical complexity will be discussed. The techniques
discussed are passive detection of the optical field (section 4.1), single sideband (SSB)
optical transmission combined with a direct detection receiver with linear filtering
(section 4.2), SSB orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) (section 4.3),
coherent receivers (section 4.4) and electronic predistortion (section 4.5). The work
on SSB signals in section 4.2 includes original work by the author to demonstrate the
effect of the FFE (described in chapter 3) in the receiver after SSB transmission.
Finally in section 4.6 the techniques which are capable of long haul transmission are
identified and compared.
4.1. Passive Field Detection
As discussed in the last chapter, in basic direct detection the phase of the optical
signal does not transfer into the electronic domain meaning that a linear filter has
limited effect in compensating chromatic dispersion. However in the method
proposed by Ellis [Ellis 2006] an asymmetrical Mach-Zehnder interferometer and
electronic signal processing are used in order to estimate the instantaneous amplitude
and frequency of the signal. These parameters are then used to reconstruct the optical
signal amplitude and phase in the electronic domain. Linear filtering can then be
used for chromatic dispersion compensation.
79
Chapter 4 – EDC Techniques Operating on the Optical Field
A conventional OOK transmitter was used with a fibre link without DCF. At the
receiver (Figure 31) a delay interferometer was used in which one path had 5 ps
greater delay than the other. The signal was detected using a balanced receiver giving
two signals, V1 and V2. As dispersion shifts the frequency of the received optical
signal, the relative intensity of the two ports gave an estimate of the instantaneous
frequency. The amplitude and frequency of the optical field were given by:
A = V1 + V2
V1 − V2 -(4.1)
F=
V1 + V2
These were used to modulate an electrical carrier using both amplitude and frequency
modulation. The resulting signal was an electrical representation of the received
optical signal. Chromatic dispersion compensation was applied electrically and
electrical square law detection gave the compensated signal. All the electrical
functions after the photodetectors could be carried out digitally.
Figure 31: Passive optical field detection and chromatic dispersion compensation scheme, from
[Ellis 2006].
Simulations of this arrangement showed that 10 .7 Gb/s transmission over up to

600 km of standard fibre was possible maintaining the BER below 2 x 10-3 [Ellis
2006]. The factor which limited the transmission distances was the accuracy of the
frequency measurement due largely to noise. No experimental confirmation of these
results has been published at the time of writing of this thesis.
Passive optical field detection has the advantages of using a standard transmitter
and a receiver that is comparable in optical complexity to that used for DPSK
reception. The technique has received little attention from the research community as
80
yet and improvements to the measurement accuracy may be possible to increase the
transmission distance above the 600 km reported simulated result.
4.2. Single Sideband Optical Transmission Combined

with Receiver Based Electronic Compensation
As described in chapter 3, interference between the carrier and the two sidebands
of an amplitude modulated signal affected by chromatic dispersion causes spectral
nulls which can not be equalised using a linear filter. In theory, this problem can be
avoided if only a single sideband (SSB) is transmitted. Using the same mathematical
argument as presented in section 3.3, the optical field for the carrier and upper
sideband is given by:
E = A + Be + jωt -(4.2)
where again, ω is the angular frequency, A and B are the amplitudes of the carrier and
sideband respectively and t is time. Now after fibre transmission and direct detection,
the instantaneous power transferred into the electronic domain is:
 
+ j  ωt +
ω 2 β 2 L    
− j  ωt +
ω 2 β 2 L  
  
 
 2    ω2 β2 L 
P ∝ A + Be ⋅ A + Be = 2 AB cosωt + 
 2 
-(4.3)
     2 
   
where once again, DC and 2ω terms have been ignored in the final equation. Thus
for an ideal SSB signal, the dispersion only adds a phase shift and this can be
compensated in the electrical domain using an all-pass filter with phase response
given by:
ω 2β2L
θ (ω ) = − -(4.4)
2
or, as is more commonly used in filter design, a group delay response given by:
dθ
D g (ω ) = − = +ωβ 2 L -(4.5)
dω
The same derivation can be carried out for the lower sideband, leading to the same
expression as in equation 4.5 but with negative sign. This argument only holds for
amplitude modulation with carrier unsuppressed.
81
Hence, in theory, SSB long haul transmission should be possible using linear
electrical filters for chromatic dispersion compensation. In addition, the use of SSB
can produce reduced back-to-back required OSNR and increased spectral efficiency
in DWDM systems [Bigo 2004]. However, the above analysis assumes a perfect SSB
signal (in which the unwanted carrier is completely suppressed). It is well known in
communications theory that generating a perfect SSB version of baseband amplitude
modulated signals leads to severe distortion (for example see [Carlson 2001]). In
practice, low pulse distortion and good back-to-back required OSNR can be achieved
by careful design of the SSB filter. Unfortunately for such a signal, the phase
characteristic of chromatic dispersion is no longer exactly linearly transferred into the
electronic domain as in equation 4.3. As we will see below, there is a trade off to
make between back-to-back required OSNR and chromatic dispersion tolerance.
Two practical techniques have been proposed for generating broadband optical
SSB signals: use of an optical sideband filter and direct generation using a MZM. In
the first approach, a double sideband signal is generated followed by an optical
bandpass filter to remove one sideband. The technique has been demonstrated using
a fibre Bragg grating optical filter and a combination of a coaxial line and a 7-tap FFE
as the electrical compensation [Bülow 2001]. At 10 Gb/s, a BER of less than 10-9
was obtained after transmission over 225km of SSMF, although the power penalty
compared with back-to-back was substantial (over 10 dB). In this case, the group
delay response of the fibre Bragg grating provided some optical dispersion
compensation. A major issue with this type of system is the accuracy with which the
laser wavelength and/or optical filter centre wavelength must be controlled. In [Watts
2003 B], using a passive optical sideband filter and microstrip compensation, a BER
of less than 10-10 was obtained at 10 Gb/s after 2040 ps/nm of dispersion (equivalent
to 120 km SSMF). The BER was maintained below 10-10 as the laser was tuned over
0.01 nm. This is achievable in practice but is more stringent than the requirement for
DWDM laser wavelength control. The tolerances would be relaxed for 40 Gb/s
systems.
In the second approach to optical SSB generation, a dual electrode MZM and an
electrical Hilbert transform filter are used. This is the optical equivalent of the phase-
82
shift method used in radio systems. Figure 32 shows the scheme for generating SSB,
in this case, using DSP. The voltages that must be applied to the two electrodes to
generate zero chip SSB signals [Sieben 1999] are:
d1 (t ) = mVπ [x(t ) + x′(t )] −

Vπ
2 -(4.6)
d 2 (t ) = mVπ [− x(t ) + x′(t )] + π
V
2
where x(t) is the modulating signal and x´(t) is its Hilbert transform, Vπ is the
modulator switching voltage and m, taking values from 0 to 0.5, is the modulation
depth. The Hilbert transform can be implemented using an analog tapped delay line
filter [Sieben 1999] or digital filters [Watts 2004]. If the drive signals in equation 4.6
are applied to the MZM transfer function (equation 2.17) the following expression for
the optical field is found [Sieben 1999]:
 π
Eout = exp ( jωot ) exp[ jπmx′(t )]cos πmx(t ) −  -(4.7)
 4
After direct detection in back-to-back configuration, the detected current can be given
as a Taylor series expansion [Sieben 1999]:
+ πmx (t ) − π 3m 3 x 3 (t )K
1 2
I = Eout =
2
-(4.8)
2 3
In this case the 2nd order terms cancel out and, if modulation depth is kept low
(m<<1), the first order term representing the desired signal, x(t) is dominant. This
expression demonstrates the trade off between back-to-back sensitivity and signal
distortion. If m is set low, the extinction ratio will also be low. This has the effect of
reducing the difference between the one and zero current levels, hence making the
signal more susceptible to noise and increasing the back-to-back required OSNR. If
m is set high, greater signal distortion due to the third (and higher) order terms will
occur. It is very difficult to represent the SSB signal after chromatic dispersion in the
analytical form of equations 4.7 and 4.8. However, the numerical simulations below
show that high values of m lead to reduced chromatic dispersion tolerance.
83
INPUT DATA
DIGITAL
TIME
HILBERT
DELAY
TRANSFORM
+ +
Σ - + Σ
DAC DAC
BESSEL BESSEL
FILTER FILTER
M-Z
CW LASER
Figure 32: Scheme for generating optical SSB using the digital phase shift technique [Watts
2004].
Using the phase shift technique, transmission over 320 km of standard SMF at
10 Gb/s with a BER of 10-9 using a 300 mm microstrip line as the electrical
compensator has been reported [Sieben 1999]. Microstrip has a suitable response for
electrical chromatic dispersion compensation. By adjustment of the substrate
thickness, track width and length a response approximating equation 4.5 over a
bandwidth of up to 100 GHz can be designed [Watts 2003 A]. However, microstrip
lines take up a lot of area on a printed circuit board or integrated circuit and are
difficult to make adaptive. A more attractive compensator would be an adaptive
linear filter such as the FFE described in Chapter 2. It is also possible that the FFE
could compensate for the signal distortion due to high values of the modulation depth,
m.
To investigate the use of SSB transmission with FFE electronic compensation in
the receiver, simulations were performed (by the author) using the same linear
transmission and receiver model as described in section 3.2.1. The transmitter was as
84
shown in Figure 32 and the Hilbert transform was implemented using a 4-tap FIR
filter using the following transfer function:
x′(n ) = x(n ) + x(n − 2) − x(n − 4) − x(n − 6)

2 2 2 2
-(4.9)
3π π π 3π
where x(n) is the sequence to be transmitted sampled at twice the communication bit
rate. 6-bit DACs with a sample rate of twice the bit rate were assumed. In general
additional taps can be added to the FIR filter and the DAC resolution can be increased
to produce a more accurate representation of the desired signal, however neither was
found to improve the final BER in this case. In the receiver, the FFE taps were
optimised to minimise BER using the same method and with the same starting values
as described in section 3.2.1.
1
0 0.9
0.8
0.7
Relative Power, dB
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
-20 0.2
0.1
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
-40
-60
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
Frequency Offset, GHz
Figure 33: Back-to-back optical spectrum and eye diagram from the SSB transmitter using m =
0.2 [Watts 2004].
To show the effect of changing the modulation parameter, m, firstly a 5-tap FFE
was used while varying m from 0.1 to 0.5 (Figure 34). A number of points can be
observed from this figure. Firstly, the increase in back-to-back required OSNR with
decreasing m, discussed above, can be clearly observed. Secondly, increasing m
reduces the tolerance to chromatic dispersion and, thirdly, the FFE is not able to
completely remove the higher order distortion caused by the SSB signal interacting
with chromatic dispersion.
85
34
32
30
Required OSNR, dB
28
26
24
22 0.1
20 0.2
0.3
18
0.4
16
0.5
14
0 100 200 300 400 500
SSMF Transmission Distance, km
Figure 34: Effect on required OSNR (for 10-9 BER measured in a 0.1 nm bandwidth) of varying
the modulation depth, m, on chromatic dispersion tolerance using a 5-tap FFE as electronic
compensator [Watts 2005 B].
The performance of SSB signals with compensating FFEs having 5, 9 and 13

taps is shown in Figure 35 along with the uncompensated case for comparison. In
this case the value of m was optimised for minimum required OSNR at each
transmission distance. A back-to-back gain of 2.5 dB in required OSNR was
observed using FFE compensation, partly due (as in the simulations of chapter 3) to
optimisation of the receiver bandwidth. Increasing the number of FFE taps enables a
higher value of chromatic dispersion to be compensated. However, increasing the
number of taps beyond 13 had no further beneficial effect on performance. Also
plotted on Figure 35 is the performance of a receiver with an ideal chromatic
dispersion compensating filter (having an all-pass transfer function with group delay
response given by equation 4.5). Improved performance was obtained with the
adaptive FFE for transmission distances up to 650 km, as the FFE could partially
compensate for the signal distortion in the SSB generation process. For transmission
distances above 650 km, the ideal chromatic dispersion compensation filter
performed better than the FFE due to noise enhancement (see section 3.1.1). At
86
distances beyond 200 km, the penalties compared with the back-to-back case are
significant. To assess the feasibility of transmission at longer distances, the
achievable OSNR values (from equation 2.2) for 80 km amplified spans are plotted in
Figure 35, assuming launch powers of 0 dBm (to avoid SPM distortion) and amplifier
noise figures of 5 dB. A 13-tap FIR filter allows the transmission of 720 km
consisting of 9 x 80 km spans before the OSNR limit is reached.
36
34 N=2
N=3
32 N=4
30 N=5
Required OSNR, dB
N=7
28 N=9
26
N=11
24
22
20
18
Uncompensated Ideal CD Compensation
16
N x 80 km Spans 5-tap FIR
14 9-tap FIR 13-tap FIR
12
0 200 400 600 800
SSMF Transmission Distance, km
Figure 35: Performance of SSB signals with an uncompensated receiver, receivers with FFEs
having 5, 9 and 13 taps and a receiver having an ideal inverse chromatic dispersion response
(required OSNR is for 10-9 BER measured in a 0.1 nm bandwidth) [Watts 2005 B].
These linear simulations have shown that broadband optical SSB transmission
combined with linear compensation in the receiver is capable of transmission over
distances of up to 720 km, albeit with substantial penalties compared with back-to-
back.
4.3. Single Sideband Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiplexing
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a commonly used

technique in radio systems as it is resilient to multipath propagation, a property which
87
also makes it attractive for compensating multimode fibre systems [Jolley 2005]. In
OFDM, the data is split into multiple channels and each channel is modulated onto a
separate carrier frequency. The frequency spacing is set to be the reciprocal of the
symbol rate and thus the channels are orthogonal. Consequently, very low frequency
spacing can be used without cross-talk, achieving high spectral density, without the
need for the very sharp filters that are required for standard FDM.
OFDM has not been considered until recently for use in SMF communications
mainly due to high back-to-back required OSNR and limited transmission distance.
However Lowery [Lowery 2005] showed that by using single sideband OFDM and
controlling the relative power of the carrier and sideband, the back-to-back required
OSNR can be similar to NRZ-OOK for a given bit rate. In addition, because each
channel has very narrow bandwidth it is not affected by chromatic dispersion in its
single sideband form even over long distances8. As the sidebands can be offset from
the carrier in OFDM, SSB-OFDM does not appear to suffer from the same
transmission penalties as the broadband SSB-OOK technique described in section 4.2.
While SSB-OFDM is a modulation format rather than a compensation scheme, it is
considered in this chapter as it enables long haul transmission using electronic
processing to overcome chromatic dispersion and has received considerable attention
in the research community as a competitor to the use of electronic compensation9.
The scheme proposed by Lowery is shown in Figure 36. The data is separated
into N lower rate ‘channels’ which are modulated onto separate carriers, in this case
using QPSK. Each carrier must be transmitted at a separate frequency with spacing
8
The alternative method of obtaining low required OSNR and good dispersion tolerance in an OFDM
system is to use a coherent receiver [Shieh 2006]. Using this approach, 4160 km SSMF transmission
of 25.8 Gb/s OFDM signals without optical compensation has been experimentally demonstrated
[Jansen 2008]. Coherent receivers for broadband signals are discussed in section 4.4. However as the
coherent OFDM approach combines a complex optical receiver with complex DSP in both transmitter
and receiver it has not been studied in detail during this work.
9
Lowery’s paper is entitled ‘OFDM for dispersion compensation of long-haul optical systems’.
However, the dispersion compensation here is quite different to that described in the rest of this thesis.
In fact, SSB-OFDM is a modulation format which is naturally very tolerant of chromatic dispersion
and compensation would not be required for OFDM transmission except for very long distances.
Lowery uses QPSK for each subcarrier. The purpose of the equaliser shown in Figure 36 is to reverse
the rotation of the QPSK constellation caused by chromatic dispersion. This equaliser could be
removed if DQPSK was used - as discussed in section 2.4.3, DQPSK uses differential coding to avoid
the need for a phase reference.
88
chosen such that each signal is orthogonal. This is conveniently achieved by using
the modulated signals as the inputs to the inverse fast Fourier transform (FFT), thus
generating a complex time domain representation of all the channels. The real and
imaginary parts of the inverse FFT are serialised and modulated onto an RF carrier,
fRF. The resulting signal is then modulated onto an optical carrier. It now consists of
the optical carrier with sidebands offset by ±fRF. The design of the optical filter and
the choice of fRF must allow the removal of one sideband and suppression of the
optical carrier by a specific proportion without distorting the wanted sideband.
Figure 36: SSB-OFDM transmission scheme, from [Lowery 2005].
After transmission and detection, the signals are demodulated using the reverse
process to that used in the transmitter. It is essential that the transmitter and receiver
are synchronised for correct detection.
As the penalty due to chromatic dispersion for SSB-OFDM is negligible, the
transmission distance at a given bit rate is dependent on fibre non-linear effects. In
[Lowery 2007] it was shown by simulation that 10 Gb/s transmission distances of
4000 km SSMF could be achieved for a BER of 2 x 10-4 and an optimum launch
power of -7 dBm without any other form of compensation 10 . The first 10 Gb/s
10
Lowery gives results in terms of Q with the performance criteria being 11.4 dB. Q is an alternative
measure of system performance defined for OOK as:
89
experimental demonstration was reported in [Schmidt 2008]. Using the scheme

shown in Figure 36, the transmitter DSP was performed off-line and loaded into 20
GSa/s arbitrary waveform generators. After transmission over 400 km SSMF (5 x 80
km) the detected signal was captured on a 20 GSa/s real time sampling oscilloscope
and the receiver DSP was also performed off-line. The required OSNR was 17.2 dB
for BER of 10-3 in a 0.1 nm bandwidth. This is considerably higher than the 8 dB
required OSNR found in simulations [Lowery 2005] due to component bandwidth
limitations.
The technique of SSB-OFDM has many advantages: a conventional optical
modulator and single direct detection receiver is used. In the scheme shown in Figure
36, the only added optical component was the sideband filter. In more recent work
[Schmidt 2008] it was shown that using a Cartesian MZM the filter can also be
removed and the signal processing at both transmitter and receiver can be entirely
digital. 10 Gb/s transmission distances of up to 4000 km have been demonstrated by
simulation but, at the time of writing, these long haul distances have yet to be
demonstrated experimentally.
4.4. The Coherent Receiver
Substantial research was carried out into coherent receivers for optical
communications up to the early 1990s. The main driver was increased sensitivity
which would allow greater spacing between regenerator sites (see Figure 1).
However, as the optical phase is transferred into the electronic domain, the potential
for electronic compensation was investigated by several researchers, for example
[Winters 1990]. The introduction of the EDFA removed the need for the extra
I1 − I 0
Q=
σ1 + σ 2
where I1, I0 are the mean signal levels of one and zero samples and σ1, σ0 are the standard deviations of
the samples and Q is in linear scale. The BER can be estimated from linear Q values using:
1  Q 
BER = erfc 
2  2
Q is often, as in Lowery’s papers, converted to dBQ given by 20·log10(Q). The BER values quoted
above use these formulae for conversion.
90
sensitivity of coherent receivers and the focus of research shifted to simpler direct
detection. However, in recent years there has been renewed interest in coherent
detection as a way of implementing electronic chromatic dispersion compensation.
This technique has very high performance although several additional optical
components must be introduced.
All coherent receiver techniques require a local oscillator (LO) laser which is
mixed with the incoming signal and allow accurate measurement of the real and
imaginary parts of the optical field permitting linear electrical filters to be used for
chromatic dispersion compensation. Techniques are categorised by the wavelength of
the LO. In homodyne coherent detection, a LO is used which is locked in wavelength
and phase to the received signal. This scheme requires a complex optical phase
locked loop but has maximum sensitivity. Heterodyne coherent systems avoid this
complexity by employing a LO with a fixed offset from the signal wavelength,
producing an electrical copy of the optical signal modulated onto a carrier of
frequency equal to the difference between LO and signal frequencies. On the other
hand, intradyne coherent receivers use a LO which is nominally at the same
wavelength as the signal, but does not have to be phase locked with it (as in
homodyne reception). Amongst the difficulties in implementing any coherent
receiver are maintaining the same polarisation state for the LO and signal and locking
the LO wavelength with respect to the signal wavelength.
The first 10 Gb/s demonstration using a coherent receiver with electronic
chromatic dispersion compensation was reported in [Gnauck 2005]. Using a
heterodyne reciever, 375 km SSMF transmission was achieved with a 2 dB penalty
compared with back-to-back (10-3 BER) using microstrip line compensation.
Although there are many different ways of implementing coherent receivers, this
section will concentrate on a intradyne technique which has received considerable
recent interest in the research community: the phase and polarisation diversity
coherent receiver using the polarisation multiplexed DQPSK modulation format.
As discussed in section 2.4.3, DQPSK has the advantage that two bits can be
transmitted per symbol. Hence 20 Gb/s data can be transmitted in the same
bandwidth as 10 Gb/s NRZ-OOK. If a DQPSK signal is transmitted on both
91
polarisations, known as polarisation multiplexing, 40 Gb/s can be transmitted in this

bandwidth. This increased bandwidth efficiency comes at the cost of increased
complexity of the transmitter: two QPSK transmitters and a polarising beam splitter
are required. The coherent phase and polarisation diversity receiver used to receive
this signal is shown in Figure 37 [Savory 2007 B]. The signal is separated into its
two polarisation states and each is separately combined with the LO in a 90° hybrid.
Four detectors are required which give the real and imaginary parts of each
polarisation. As all information about the optical field (amplitude, phase and
polarisation state) are available in the electronic domain, all other receiver functions
can be carried out using advanced DSP [Savory 2008] including compensation of the
following impairments:
1. Polarisation rotation during transmission – this means that dynamic control of
polarisation in the receiver is not required;
2. Polarisation mode dispersion;
3. Chromatic dispersion;
4. Drift of LO wavelength with respect to signal wavelength - this ensures that the
LO does not have to be phase locked with the signal wavelength so small offsets
in wavelength can be tolerated, although information from this process can be
used to control the LO wavelength to within acceptable bounds.
Figure 37: Phase and polarisation diversity receiver, from [Savory 2007 B].
The technique described above is extremely powerful. Firstly, the bit rate is
increased by a factor of four for a given Baud (or symbol) rate compared with NRZ-
92
OOK due to be the use of the polarisation multiplexed DQPSK modulation format.
Secondly, the availability of optical field information and the use of advanced DSP in
the receiver give considerable robustness against transmission impairments. In
[Savory 2007 B] 42.8 Gb/s data (10.7 GBaud) was transmitted over 6400 km of
SSMF without any optical compensation for chromatic dispersion with 3x10-3 BER
and an optimum launch power of –7 dBm.
The main disadvantage compared with other electronic compensation schemes is
that many additional components are required including two DQPSK transmitters,
polarisation beamsplitters, hybrids, four detectors and a LO laser.
4.5. Electronic Predistortion
The previous section discussed a technique for measuring the amplitude, phase
and polarisation state of the optical field at the receiver in order to perform electronic
compensation. An alternative is to control the optical field at the transmitter, pre-
distorting the signal in order to obtain an undistorted signal at the receiver. The
concept of electronic predistortion (EPD) is shown in Figure 38. If the transfer
function of the fibre channel, H(s), is known, electronic processing can be used at the
transmitter to apply the inverse transfer function, H-1(s) using a modulator that allows
arbitrary control of the magnitude and phase of the electric field such as the MZM. A
direct detector can then be employed at the receiver.
Electronic Adaptive Control

Input Bit Processing Feedback
Stream
H-1(s)
Direct
Laser Detection Recovered
Fibre Receiver Bit Stream
Amplitude/Phase H(s)
Modulator
Figure 38: The concept of electronic predistortion [Watts 2005 C].
EPD is most effective for overcoming deterministic impairments which are

relatively static in nature such as chromatic dispersion. In these cases, if the
93
characteristics of the fibre are known, the adaptive feedback path is not required.
Adaptive feedback of EPD is not considered in this thesis. However, performance
measures such as BER (extracted from FEC) or Q-factor can be communicated from
receiver to transmitter to allow adaptive control or automatic determination of the
fibre characteristics. For time varying effects such as PMD, the required update
frequency must be less than the reciprocal of the round trip communication time.
With a typical update requirement of 1 kHz, this would limit PMD compensation by
EPD to links of less than 100 km.
The first report of EPD in the literature [El Said 2005] simulated a duobinary
transmission system using a Cartesian MZM and chromatic dispersion compensation
for up to 800 km SSMF. The drive signals for the predistorted waveform were
created using two half bit period spaced analog FIR filters with up to 16 taps. A
BiCMOS chip was fabricated containing two 10-tap FIR filters suitable for
compensating the chromatic dispersion of 400 km of SSMF but transmission
experiments were not performed.
(a) DAC
ETX
laser
Input bit DSP
sequence π/2
DAC
(b)
DAC
ETX
DSP laser
Input bit
sequence
DAC
Figure 39: Digital EPD Transmitter using (a) a Cartesian or (b) a dual drive MZM, from [Killey
2005 B].
94
[Killey 2005 A] proposed a digital implementation of EPD using a dual drive

MZM and look-up tables to compensate chromatic dispersion. It was shown that
digital-to-analog converters (DAC) with 2 Sa/b sample rate and 4-bit resolution gave
less than 1 dB eye opening penalty for transmission distances up to 600 km. The
digital implementation of EPD is shown in Figure 39 for both Cartesian and dual
drive MZM. Both types of MZM (discussed in section 2.5) can be used for EPD.
The main advantage of the Cartesian MZM is that it allows the use of linear
compensation for chromatic dispersion at the expense of higher cost and drive voltage
requirements [McGhan 2006 B].
The first experimental demonstration of EPD was reported in[McNicol 2005] in
which 10.0 Gb/s DPSK signals were transmitted over 3840 km SSMF confirming that
long haul operation was viable. The transmitter used a Cartesian MZM and an
application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) incorporating two digital FIR filters for
chromatic dispersion compensation and 6-bit resolution, 22 GSa/s DACs.
1.4
EPD (5600 km)
1.2 Conventional NRZ-OOK
1.0
Power, mW
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Time, ps
Figure 40: Comparison of a conventional NRZ-OOK signal with an EPD signal for transmission
over 5600 km for the same bit sequence and launch power (-5 dBm).
EPD systems are more susceptible to fibre non-linearity than conventional

dispersion-mapped systems. This statement, in fact, applies to any system in which
chromatic dispersion is compensated entirely at the terminals whether the
95
compensation is optical or electronic. The reason for this can be observed in Figure
40 which compares a conventional NRZ-OOK signal and an EPD signal both with -5
dBm launch power11. It can be observed that the conventional signal has a peak-to-
mean ratio (sometimes known as the Crest factor) of two, whereas the EPD signal has
much higher peak powers. These peaks in the signal power cause greater nonlinear
phase distortion (see equation 2.14).
[Klelamp 2006] showed that the non-linear threshold launch power (for a 1 dB
penalty) was 9 dB lower for EPD systems compared to optically compensated
dispersion mapped systems when using OOK formats and 6 dB when using DPSK
after 960 km SSMF (12 x 80 km). As shown in section 2.3, the non-linear threshold
is important in determining the maximum transmission distance. To increase the non-
linear threshold, SPM compensation can be performed in addition to chromatic
dispersion compensation. It was shown in [Killey 2005 B] that for NRZ-OOK
signals generated using 20 GSa/s DACs with 10 GHz analog bandwidth, the 2 dB
penalty launch power could be increased from -1.0 dBm to +4.5 dBm after 1200 km
of SSMF (15 x 80 km). For DPSK signals an increase in the 2 dB penalty launch
power from 0.0 dBm to + 3.5 dBm after 1280 km SSMF was found experimentally
[Roberts 2006]. These experiments used two arbitrary waveform generators (AWG)
with 20 GSa/s sample rate to create EPD waveforms which had been calculated off-
line for a 211-1 bit sequence. The bandwidth of the electronics was stated to be the
limiting factor in SPM compensation although no analysis of the bandwidth
requirements for a given launch power was offered in this or any other published
work. Using the same technique, a 10.0 Gb/s transmission distance of 5120 km
SSMF with an OSNR penalty of 3.5 dB at 3 x 10-3 BER was achieved using the RZ-
DPSK format [McGhan 2006 A]. Even using compensation for SPM, such a long
transmission distance required the launch power to be maintained at –7 dBm.
Even if SPM is compensated, the high peak powers in EPD signals can cause
XPM penalties in DWDM transmission. [Essiambre 2005] showed that for EPD
systems operating at high powers, the penalties due to XPM are variable and highly
11
Figure 40 was produced using the simulation technique described in chapter 5.
96
dependent on the data in adjacent channels. However, due to the high local
dispersion of EPD systems, four wave mixing was found to be negligible. With only
chromatic dispersion compensation, an 1120 km NRZ-OOK DWDM system of 8
wavelengths each with 0 dBm launch power separated by 50 or 100 GHz was
simulated. On each wavelength, a 10.7 Gb/s 27 DeBruijn sequence was transmitted.
Random time delays were applied to each of the 8 channels for each trial. In 100
trials, penalties due to XPM were found to vary from 0.9 to 3.5 dB for 50 GHz
spacing and 0.8 to 2.3 dB for 100 GHz. When SPM compensation was added and the
launch power was increased to + 3dBm per channel, occasional very large XPM
penalties (>16 dB) were found for 50 GHz spacing. By comparison, for an optically
compensated and dispersion mapped system of the same length with 50 GHz spacing
and +8 dBm launch power, the penalty due to XPM was found to vary from 0 to 0.4
dB. In each case (EPD chromatic dispersion compensation only, EPD chromatic
dispersion and SPM compensation and dispersion mapped), only a single launch
power was chosen so it could not be determined whether this problem applied also to
lower powers. One method of mitigating the XPM effect is to transmit adjacent
wavelengths with perpendicular polarisations [Killey 2005 B], although no results are
available in the published literature to demonstrate the effectiveness of this.
Despite the issues of XPM, 50 GHz spaced DWDM transmission has been
demonstrated [Birk 2006] over 1600 km SSMF (20 x 80 km) using 72 wavelengths in
total including a group of 7 wavelengths carrying EPD transmission of 231 – 1 bit
PRBS sequences. A minimum of 5 dB OSNR margin was found under the worst case
channel timing and polarisation for the central EPD channel (of 7) using launch
power of -1 dBm per wavelength. Reducing the launch power to -2.5 dBm per
wavelength, 135 hours of operation was recorded without an error. However, it was
not explained why -2.5 dBm launch power was chosen for the long term test rather
than the launch power which gave the maximum margin (-1 dBm). This may have
been to avoid XPM induced errors.
97
4.6. Discussion of Techniques which Operate on the

Optical Field
This chapter has described five electronic compensation techniques which allow
the electronics to control or measure the optical field. These have all been shown to
allow much longer transmission distances than the techniques for adding electronic
equalisers to conventional IM/DD systems that were described in chapter 3. Two of
the techniques, passive field detection and SSB with receiver electronic compensation,
are limited to transmission distances of several hundred kilometers and hence are not
true long haul technologies. Of the other techniques which are capable of long haul
performance, the coherent phase/polarisation diversity receiver would appear to be
the most powerful. Due to the use of the QPSK modulation format and polarisation
multiplexing, 40 Gb/s can be transmitted in the same bandwidth as 10 Gb/s NRZ-
OOK and with 10 GHz bandwidth components. Compensation for PMD can be
performed without adding any additional optical components, a considerable
advantage for transmission over older fibre. The effect of PMD on EPD and SSB-
OFDM signals has not been investigated in the published literature, but in both cases
some additional form of compensation would need to be added at the receiver.
However the advantages of the coherent system come at the expense of a
considerable number of additional optical components. The purpose of applying
electronic compensation is to avoid additional optical components and perform as
many functions as possible in the electronic domain on the assumption that optical
components will be more costly and complex to manufacture for the foreseeable
future.
It is in principle possible to achieve the same bandwidth efficiency as with the
coherent scheme using QPSK polarisation multiplexed EPD signals. However, in
addition to the two EPD transmitters, detecting this format would require polarisation
multiplexing/demultiplexing and a polarisation diversity receiver with four delay
interferometers and eight photodiodes. An alternative would be to transmit a single
40 Gb/s EPD signal which could offer similar overall bandwidth efficiency if the
98
wavelength spacing was equal to the coherent system. The disadvantage of this is the
requirement for 80 GSa/s DACs and 16 times greater processor memory12.
However, due to the vast bandwidth available on a single mode fibre, bandwidth
efficiency is rarely a key practical issue at the present time. The same bit rate can be
obtained transmitting four 10 Gb/s EPD signals on separate wavelengths. If a
modulation format is selected which can be detected using a simple direct detection
receiver (such as NRZ-OOK or duobinary) this would have similar optical
complexity to a single phase/polarisation diversity coherent system 13 . The same
argument applies to 4 x 10 Gb/s SSB-OFDM transmission. SSB-OFDM is a
promising technique; however it has not been experimentally proven to operate over
long haul transmission distances at the time of writing of this thesis.
Of the techniques described, EPD would seem to be competitive in delivering
long haul transmission performance with the minimum of complexity. The next three
chapters present original work on EPD. From the literature survey presented in
section 4.5 it is clear that there are many gaps in the published knowledge on non-
linear transmission of EPD signals. Chapter 5 presents simulations which
demonstrate the factors which affect the maximum transmission distance. The other
main factor which can affect the performance of EPD transmission is the accuracy
with which the predistorted waveform can be generated using DSP. The design of
DSP for compensation of chromatic dispersion in long haul systems is considered in
chapter 6. Finally, chapter 7 deals with the real-time experimental demonstration of
EPD at optical bit rates. Custom integrated circuit design as demonstrated in
[McNicol 2005] is impractical for experimental work. A 10.7 Gb/s EPD transmitter
using real time DSP on field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) is described and
transmission over distances up to 1200 km SSMF is demonstrated.
12
As the fibre memory due to chromatic dispersion (see equation 2.11) increases as the bit rate squared.
The compensation processor must have a similar memory.
13
The coherent system uses 2 Cartesian MZM and a polarisation beam splitter at the transmitter and a
polarisation beam splitter, LO laser, 2 hybrids and 4 photodetectors at the receiver. The EPD system
would use 4 Cartesian MZM at the transmitter and 4 photodetectors at the receiver. The EPD system
would use 4 ports of the optical multiplexer and demultiplexer rather than 1 for the coherent system.
99
5. Fundamental Transmission Limitations of
Electronically Predistorted Signals
As explained in chapter 4, EPD works by transmitting a waveform that will
appear at the receiver as an ideal signal. The factors which limit the maximum
transmission distance of an EPD system can be divided into two general categories.
One is the accuracy with which the EPD waveform can be generated in real time.
These limitations, which are discussed in chapter 6, tend to be due to issues of
technological availability and engineering. The other category of limitations is more
fundamental in that it deals with the effect of fibre transmission on EPD signals due
to their special characteristics. These limitations are the subject of this chapter.
In chapter 4, the current literature on EPD was reviewed. The importance of
fibre non-linearity, particularly SPM and XPM was discussed. However, many of the
published results are based on simulations at a single transmission distance or launch
power. Therefore the maximum transmission distance can not be determined, nor can
a full understanding be obtained of the interaction between EPD signals and fibre
non-linearity.
In this chapter, simulation results are presented which aim to determine the
maximum transmission distance of EPD signals in single channel and DWDM
configurations. Ideal EPD waveforms are used to isolate the fundamental
transmission issues from those relating to technology availability such as DAC
sample rate and resolution and processor memory size. In keeping with the overall
aims of this thesis, NRZ-OOK and duobinary modulation formats are considered as
they allow a standard direct detection receiver, thus confining the additional
complexity to the transmitter. After the simulation method has been described in
section 5.1, the maximum single channel transmission distance for 10.7 Gb/s NRZ-
OOK and duobinary EPD signals with only chromatic dispersion compensation is
found in section 5.2. Next, the variance of the XPM penalty in DWDM transmission,
first described in [Essiambre 2005], is investigated for 50 GHz wavelength spacing
and worse case polarisation (section 5.3). In particular, the effect of XPM penalties
100
Chapter 5 – Fundamental Transmission Limits of EPD Signals
on maximum transmission distance is determined. One option proposed for

extending EPD transmission distances is the use of SPM compensation. In principle
for single channel operation, SPM compensation can allow any launch power to be
used without penalty. However, it may be thought that if XPM penalties dominate
and still remain once SPM is compensated, then there is little value in SPM
compensation for DWDM transmission. The very high penalties reported in
[Essiambre 2005] when using SPM compensation at +3 dBm over 1200 km SSMF
suggest this, although there is not sufficient evidence in the paper to be certain.
Multiple channel results using SPM compensation are given in section 5.4 to
determine whether there is any value in implementing SPM compensation for
DWDM networks and to find the maximum launch powers available. In addition, the
complexity of processing required to determine the SPM compensation parameters is
determined. Finally, in section 5.5, the implications of the results for practical optical
communications systems are discussed.
5.1. Simulation Model
The simulations used custom MATLAB code. The functions for DeBruijn
sequence generation, fibre transmission, optical and electrical filtering and the
addition of optical noise were written by other researchers within the Optical
Networks Group, modified by the author where necessary for DWDM EPD operation.
The code for Monte-Carlo BER estimation was written by the author.
This section describes the simulation technique and parameters used in
subsequent sections. The fixed simulation parameters are shown in Table 4. As FEC
is widely used in long haul optical communications, a bit rate of 10.7 Gb/s with a
target BER of 10-3 was assumed. The Monte-Carlo technique (of which the
mathematical details are explained in appendix B) was used for BER estimation.
Although Monte-Carlo simulations are slow, they are generally the most accurate as
no assumptions are made about the noise probability density functions in the receiver
(as for the semi-analytical approach used in other simulations in this thesis). When
targeting a BER of 10-3 the simulation times are acceptable. For each simulation
result, 105 bits were simulated, meaning that for a BER of 10-3, a 99 % confidence
101
level is obtained that the estimated BER will fall between 7.6 x 10-4 and 1.3 x 10-3.
For back-to-back operation, this translates into a 99 % confidence level that the
required OSNR value will fall between ±0.17 dB. The uncertainty is increased as the
required OSNR is increased as described in appendix B-3.
The technique for finding the maximum transmission distance for non-linear
transmission, described in section 2.3.4, was used. Finding this figure does involve
some arbitrary parameter choices, particularly the span length. In principle, the
transmission distance can be continually increased by reducing the span length,
although there are obvious economic and practical limitations to this. In this work, a
link having 80 km spans between amplifier sites was considered. This is typical of
terrestrial long haul systems and is a value chosen for many studies in optical
networks. Submarine networks would typically use shorter spans of 40 - 60 km in
order to increase OSNR margin.
For DWDM simulations, 50 GHz spacing was chosen as it is typical for
commercial 10 Gb/s systems [ITU 2002]. Many commercial systems will use more
coarse spacing in practice as the full capacity of the fibre is not required, but the
equipment must still be capable of operating with 50 GHz spacing. XPM can be
mitigated by arranging the polarisation of adjacent channels to be perpendicular.
However, this would involve additional cost and complexity and may make the
performance more sensitive to PMD. In this work, co-polarised channels were
assumed to find the worst case performance.
At this stage it is worth mentioning the limitations of the model, in particular the
effects of laser linewidth and polarisation and four-wave mixing (FWM). Phase noise
due to the finite linewidth of the laser is converted to amplitude noise and hence into
signal distortion by chromatic dispersion. In conventional dispersion mapped
systems, the chromatic dispersion is maintained close to zero by periodic dispersion
compensation along the link. In EPD systems however, chromatic dispersion is only
compensated at the terminals and phase noise to intensity noise conversion has a far
greater effect [El Said 2005]. In this work the laser is modeled as an ideal
monochromatic source so phase noise to intensity noise conversion was not
considered. This is equivalent to assuming that the laser linewidth has been selected
102
to be narrow enough to avoid any significant penalty. The laser linewidth

requirement of EPD systems is a topic for further research.
One advantage of the high local dispersion of EPD systems is that four wave
mixing (FWM) distortion is reported to be negligible [Essiambre 2005]. For this
reason, and in order to reduce DWDM simulation times, a bandwidth of 450 GHz
was simulated for 9 channel, 50 GHz spaced transmission. Hence, the effect of FWM
is not considered.
Table 4
Simulation Parameters
Parameter Symbol Characteristics

Bit rate rb 10.7 Gb/s
Transmitted sequence DeBruijn sequence of 29 bits
Fibre dispersion D 17.0 ps/nm·km
Fibre attenuation α 0.22 dB/km
Fibre non-linear parameter γ 1.22 /W·km
Span length L 80 km
Amplifier gain G 17.6 dB
Amplifier noise figure FN 5.0 dB
Receiver optical bandwidth Bopt 2nd order Gaussian
25 GHz FWHM (NRZ-OOK)
15 GHz FWHM (duobinary)
Receiver electrical bandwidth Belec 7 GHz 4th order Bessel
Bandwidth of OSNR measurement RBW 0.1 nm
Performance criteria Required OSNR for 10-3 BER
Electronic Computation Fibre Transmission
L, -D, -α, -γ L, -D, -α, -γ L, -D, -α, -γ L, D, α, γ L, D, α, γ L, D, α, γ

Bit Bit
Signal Sequence
Sequence Receiver
Generator Output
Input G
-G -G -G G G
Figure 41: Concept of back-propagation for calculation of EPD waveforms
Polarisation effects such as PMD and PDL for EPD systems have not been
considered in the published literature. As there is no reason to expect that they should
103
be more serious for EPD systems than for dispersion mapped systems they were
neglected in the simulations presented in this chapter.
5.1.1. Calculation of EPD Waveforms by Back-propagation

Back-propagation was used to find the ideal EPD signals for transmission [Killey
2005 A]. The full process, shown in Figure 41, is conceptually similar to the mid-
span spectral inversion technique described in section 2.2.4 with the first half of the
link and inversion performed electronically before fibre transmission. To model non-
linear fibre propagation, the well known split step Fourier technique is used to solve
the non-linear Schrödinger equation (mathematical details are given in appendix B-1).
To find the ideal EPD signal, the target signal desired at the receiver was first
generated. In this work, the target signals were generated from a 10.7 Gb/s DeBruijn
sequence of length 29 bits. The sequence length was chosen to keep simulation times
reasonable, particularly in the DWDM cases. In the case of NRZ-OOK, a raised
cosine profile with 30 ps rise and fall times was used. The technique used to generate
duobinary is shown in Figure 42. The DeBruijn sequence was first precoded as
described in section 1.4.1. Then the resulting signal was low pass filtered using a 4th
order Bessel response with cut-off frequency one quarter of the bit rate [Ono 1998].
The eye diagrams for the target signals are shown in Figure 43.
DeBruijn
Sequence Bessel
Generator Filter
T
CW laser
Precoder Input
MZM
Figure 42: Generation of desired duobinary signal.
The target signal was then propagated along a link identical to the transmission
link except that the signs of the fibre dispersion (D), fibre attenuation (α), fibre non-
linear parameter (γ) and amplifier gain (G) were changed as shown in Figure 41. The
amplifiers were modeled as noise-free gain blocks. The output of this back-
propagation was used as the ideal EPD signal.
104
(a) (b)
Figure 43: Eye diagrams of the target signals for (a) NRZ-OOK and (b) duobinary signals both
with -5 dBm power.
5.1.2. Transmission and Receiver Model

The fibre transmission and receiver model is shown in Figure 44. For simulation
of DWDM transmission, nine copies of the ideal EPD signal, Eideal, were made and
given random time delays to decorrelate each from the other signals. Each signal was
then frequency shifted using the equation:
j 2πf offsett
Eshifted = Eideal e -(5.1)
where foffset is the frequency shift. The values of foffset were chosen so that the signals
were separated by 50 GHz. The transmitted optical field was then found by summing
the nine Eshifted signals.
The signal was then propagated through a transmission link with the same
configuration as for the back-propagation. Each span consisted of 80 km SSMF and a
noise-free amplifier (having the parameters in Table 4 rather than the negative values
used for back-propagation). The amplifier gain was chosen to exactly match the span
loss so that the launch power was the same for each span.
At the receiver, white Gaussian noise, representing the ASE noise of the
amplifiers, was added to give a specified OSNR. Out of band optical noise was
removed using a 2nd order Gaussian optical bandpass filter with 25 GHz FWHM in
the NRZ-OOK case. Due to the narrower spectrum and greater tolerance to tight
optical filtering [Winzer 2006], a narrower filter with 15 GHz FWHM was used for
105
duobinary to reduce the required OSNR. The signal was converted to an electrical
current using an ideal photodiode and filtered using a 4th order electrical Bessel filter
with 7 GHz cut-off frequency. The Monte-Carlo technique was used to estimate BER.
Non-linear
Transmission
Back-
Propagated EPD
Signal Input Optical Electrical
Error
+ + Bandpass Bessel
Counting
Filter Filter
x Nspans
Time Shift
White
Gaussian
Noise
Frequency
Shift
x Nλ
Figure 44: Fibre transmission and receiver model.
The back-to-back required OSNR using this model for NRZ-OOK was 8.8 dB.
Duobinary has a more complex required OSNR against chromatic dispersion
characteristic as shown in Figure 14. The lowest required OSNR is found at
approximately ±90 km SSMF of the distance that the chromatic dispersion
compensation has been designed for. For this reason, the forward-propagation
distance was arranged to be 90 km longer than the back-propagation distance when
using duobinary. The lowest required OSNR for duobinary was 9.4 dB.
5.2. Single Channel Transmission Limits
Firstly, the required OSNR against launch power was found for various
transmission distances using a single channel and compensation only for chromatic
dispersion (i.e. the back propagation used linear transmission, γ = 0 W-1km-1). An
example is shown in Figure 45 for 4000 km transmission. The actual OSNR line was
calculated from equation 2.2 (section 2.1.1). For each distance the linear limit and
non-linear limit launch powers were found. It can be observed that the Duobinary
modulation format has both a high linear limit launch power (due to its higher back-
to-back required OSNR) and a lower non-linear limit launch power (due to lower
tolerance to fibre non-linearity).
106
18
17 Duobinary
16 NRZ-OOK
Required OSNR, dB
15
14
13
12 Actual
OSNR
11
10
8
-11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3
Launch Power, dBm
Figure 45: Required OSNR for 10-3 BER against launch power after 4000 km transmission for
the NRZ-OOK and Duobinary formats. The actual OSNR achievable is also shown.
The linear and non-linear limits for both NRZ-OOK and Duobinary are plotted
in Figure 46. The maximum transmission distances were 6800 km SSMF for NRZ-
OOK and 5200 km for Duobinary. In both cases the optimum launch power was -6.5
dBm. As discussed earlier, these transmission limits are somewhat arbitrary as the
choice of a shorter span length would push the linear limit curve downwards with a
consequent increase in the transmission distance and reduction in the optimum launch
power. However, for both modulation formats, the maximum distances with 80 km
spans are approaching the maximum requirements of fibre optic systems (i.e.
approximately the width of the Pacific Ocean).
107
-2
(a) Non-Linear
-3 Limit
Launch Power Limit, dBm

-4
-5
-6 Optimum Launch
-7 Power = - 6.5 dBm
-8
-9 Max. Distance
= 6800 km
-10 Linear
-11 Limit
-12
2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 6000 6500 7000
-2
(b)
-3
Non-Linear
Launch Power Limit, dBm
-4 Limit
-5
-6 Optimum Launch
-7 Power = - 6.5 dBm
-8
-9 Max. Distance
= 5200 km
-10
Linear
-11 Limit
-12
2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 6000 6500 7000
Figure 46: Linear and non-linear launch power limits for (a) NRZ-OOK and (b) Duobinary
showing maximum achievable transmission distance and optimum launch power.
Although Figure 46 demonstrates ultra-long haul transmission, the OSNR

margin (see section 2.3.4) can be very small as the maximum distance is approached.
Network operators require several dB of OSNR margin in order to cope with time
varying effects such as PMD and amplifier transients. Figure 47 shows the OSNR
108
margin for NRZ-OOK and duobinary against transmission distance. Again, the
margin can be increased by choosing shorter span lengths.
The maximum transmission distances predicted by Figure 46 are not easily
scalable with bit rate. The linear launch power limit increases linearly with bit rate
(i.e. as the bit rate is increased by a factor of four to 42.8 Gb/s the limit is increased
by 6dB). During this thesis work, the nonlinear limit was not found to vary linearly
with bit rate. However, this line of inquiry was not pursued. In [Weber 2008], the
nonlinear threshold launch power for EPD was found to increase from -2 dBm to +0.5
dBm as the bit rate was increased from 10 to 40 Gb/s. In contrast, in a dispersion
mapped system, the nonlinear thresholds were reduced from over 10 dBm to 1 dBm.
Only two bit rates were considered in [Weber 2008] so the general trend of nonlinear
threshold with bit rate could not be observed. This is a subject for further research.
4
OSNR Margin at Optimum Launch
3.5
2.5
Power, dB
NRZ-OOK
2
1.5
Duobinary
1
0.5
-0.5
2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 6000 6500 7000
Figure 47: OSNR margin at the optimum launch power against transmission distance for NRZ-
OOK and duobinary.
To attempt to explain why duobinary EPD is less tolerant to nonlinearity than

NRZ-OOK, the peak-to-mean ratios of the ideal transmitted signals were investigated.
Figure 48 shows the peak-to-mean ratios of NRZ-OOK and duobinary ideal EPD
signals using a 29 DeBruijn sequence. Linear ratios are used (rather than ratios
expressed in dB as in some papers) and the approximate ratio of 2 for conventional
109
dispersion mapped transmission is also shown for comparison. There was no clear
trend suggesting that peak-to-mean ratio increases with transmission distance as
might be expected. In addition, the ratio was found to vary significantly with the
sequence length used. Clearly peak-to-mean ratio is far too crude a measure to be
able to accurately predict nonlinear transmission performance as it only takes account
of the small section of the waveform which contains the largest peak. However, the
mean ratio for duobinary was 7.5 compared with 6.2 for NRZ-OOK providing some
evidence that duobinary EPD signals have greater power variation. It is also not
immediately obvious from the waveforms shown in Figure 49 that duobinary would
be less tolerant to SPM.
10
Duobinary
9
Peak-to-Mean Ratio, linear
8 Duobinary EPD
Mean
7
NRZ-OOK EPD
6 Mean
4 OOK-NRZ
3 Conventional
Transmission Mean
2
1
0
2400 3200 4000 4800 5600 6400 7200
Figure 48: Peak-to-Mean ratios in linear scale against transmission distance for conventional
dispersion mapped, NRZ-OOK EPD and duobinary EPD signals.
5.3. DWDM Transmission Limits
As shown in [Essiambre 2005] the effect of XPM for DWDM EPD systems is
strongly dependent on the data in the adjacent channels. To investigate this, 9
channel simulations were carried out for various launch powers in 5600 km
transmission. The BER of the centre channel was monitored and it was confirmed by
further simulation that channel counts greater than 9 had no significant effect due to
the walk-off of channels which have a greater wavelength separation. Only NRZ-
110
OOK was used in this section of the work as it had already been shown in the single
channel simulations that duobinary EPD was less tolerant to nonlinearities.
Compensation for dispersion only was applied. For each launch power, 50 trials with
random time delays between the channels were carried out.
1.8
NRZ-OOK
1.6 Duobinary
1.4
1.2
Power, mW
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Time, ps
Figure 49: Ideal EPD waveforms for 5600 km transmission using the same bit sequence
comparing NRZ-OOK and duobinary modulation formats.
The results are shown on the bar charts in Figure 50 using 0.4 dB wide bins for
required OSNR. It can be observed that for -8 dBm all 50 results fall in a single bin
whereas for -5.5 dBm, not only is the mean required OSNR increased but there is a
considerable spread of results and individual extreme values which are well above the
mean in agreement with the finding of Essiambre.
The required OSNR against launch power for both the single channel and 9
channel simulations after 5600 km are plotted in Figure 51. For the 9 channel results
the mean is plotted with error bars indicating the highest and lowest values found in
the 50 trials. It can be observed that although the mean required OSNRs are not
significantly higher in the 9 channel case compared with the single channel case, the
extreme high values make transmission possible only over the launch power range -
8.0 to -6.5 dBm. Hence XPM decreases the optimum launch power to approximately
-7.0 dBm. A relatively small variation in required OSNR was found in 50 trials at -
7.0 dBm launch power with maximum and minimum values of 9.2 and 9.8 dB
111
respectively compared with the back-to-back value of 8.8 dB.It is interesting to note
that XPM can give a lower required OSNR than in the single channel case, although
the positive error bars are always larger than the negative. It is of course probable
that the 50 trials did not include the worst (or best) case channel delays and hence the
error bars should be larger.
50
-8.0 dBm
Occurances
40
Number of
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
50 Required OSNR, dB
-7.0 dBm
Occurances
40
Number of
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
Required OSNR, dB
50
-6.0 dBm
Occurances
Number of
40
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
-5.5 dBm
Occurances
40
Number of
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
Required OSNR, dB
Figure 50: Bar charts of required OSNR for 50 trials of a 9-channel, 5600 km simulation for
various launch powers.
112
17
16
15
Required OSNR, dB
14
13 9 Channels,
50 GHz Spacing
12
11
10
Single
9 Channel
8
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4
Launch Power, dBm
Figure 51: Required OSNR against launch power for single channel and 9 channel cases after
5600 km transmission.
To investigate the effect of XPM on maximum transmission distance, 50 trials

were carried out at various transmission distances using -6.5 dBm launch power. The
OSNR margin is plotted in Figure 52 for the single and 9 channel cases. Again, the 9
channel points are the mean values of the 50 trials and the error bars indicate the
maximum and minimum values. The single channel result is shown for comparison.
It is shown that the maximum transmission distance due to XPM with 50 GHz
channel spacing is reduced to less than 5600 km. If the launch power is reduced to
the optimum for multiple channel operation (-7.0 dBm), the maximum transmission
distance is increased to approximately 6000 km as shown in Figure 53. The results
for multiple channel operation at -7.0 dBm launch power are compared with single
channel results using -6.5 dBm launch power. At every transmission distance, the
margin was lower for -7.0 dBm launch power in the single channel case.
113
3.5
Single Channel, -6.5 dBm
3 Launch Power
OSNR Margin, dBm
2.5
1.5
9 Channels,
1 -6.5 dBm Launch
Power
0.5
-0.5
3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 6000 6500 7000
Figure 52: OSNR margin against transmission distance in the single channel and 9 channel cases
using -6.5 dBm launch power in both cases.
3.5 Single Channel, -6.5 dBm

Launch Power
3
OSNR Margin, dB
2.5
1.5
1 9 Channels,
-7.0 dBm Launch
0.5 Power
-0.5
3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 6000 6500 7000
Figure 53: OSNR margin against transmission distance in the single channel (using -6.5 dBm
launch power) and 9 channel cases (using -7.0 dBm).
114
5.4. The Effect of SPM Compensation
One option for increasing maximum transmission distance or OSNR margin is to

compensate for SPM in addition to chromatic dispersion. This is considerably more
complex than compensating for chromatic dispersion alone which can be achieved
using linear filters (see chapter 6). Calculating the EPD waveform to overcome SPM
involves back-propagation of the signal using the full split-step Fourier technique as
shown in Figure 41. It is likely that if SPM compensation is applied in practice, for
example using the look-up table (LUT) technique described in [Killey 2006], then a
similar method would be used to calculate the LUT coefficients.
13
80 km
40 km
12 20 km
Required OSNR, dB
5 km
11 2 km
10
8
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Launch Power, dBm
Figure 54: Required OSNR against launch power for chromatic dispersion and SPM
compensation after 4000 km transmission for various values of back-propagation step size.
In principle if back-propagation is applied without restrictions on step size,

bandwidth and processor memory any amount of SPM can be compensated. The
maximum step size which can be used for the split step Fourier algorithm for back-
115
propagation14 is therefore of practical interest as it affects the required computational

intensity. Figure 54 shows the maximum launch powers that can be compensated for
various back-propagation step sizes. It can be observed that for launch powers up to
+1 dBm, no significant penalty is found even when setting the step size equal to the
span length. This considerably simplifies the calculations required for back-
propagation.
17
Single channel with CD
16 compensation only
15 9 channel, 50 GHz
Required OSNR, dB
spacing with CD and SPM

14 compensation
13
12
11
10
8
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2
Launch Power, dBm
Figure 55: Required OSNR against launch power for 9 channels with 50 GHz spacing and
chromatic dispersion and SPM compensation applied after 5600 km transmission. The single
channel result is also shown for comparison.
In DWDM transmission, a signal with chromatic dispersion and SPM

compensation will still suffer from XPM. 9 channel simulations were carried out for
5600 km transmission at various launch powers for signals with chromatic dispersion
and SPM compensation. The results are shown in Figure 55 with single channel
results for comparison.
14
For non-linear fibre transmission modelling (forward propagation), the step size is calculated for
each step such that the maximum phase change over the step is 3 mrad as described in Appendix B-1.
116
various launch powers using both chromatic dispersion and SPM compensation.
Figure 56: Bar charts of required OSNR for 50 trials of a 9-channel, 5600 km simulation for
Number of Number of Number of Number of Number of

Occurances Occurances Occurances Occurances Occurances
10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50
0
0
9.2 9.2 9.2 9.2 9.2
9.6 9.6 9.6 9.6 9.6

10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0
10.4 10.4 10.4 10.4 10.4
10.8 10.8 10.8 10.8 10.8
11.2 11.2 11.2 11.2 11.2
11.6 11.6 11.6 11.6 11.6
Required OSNR, dB
Required OSNR, dB
Required OSNR, dB
Required OSNR, dB
Required OSNR, dB
12.0 12.0 12.0 12.0 12.0

12.4 12.4
117
12.4 12.4 12.4

12.8 12.8 12.8 12.8 12.8
13.2 13.2 13.2 13.2 13.2
13.6 13.6 13.6 13.6 13.6
14.0 14.0 14.0 14.0 14.0
14.4 14.4 14.4 14.4 14.4
14.8 14.8 14.8 14.8 14.8
15.2 15.2 15.2 15.2 15.2
-2.5 dBm
-3.0 dBm
-4.0 dBm
-5.0 dBm
-7.0 dBm
15.6 15.6 15.6 15.6 15.6
16.0 16.0 16.0 16.0 16.0
16.4 16.4 16.4 16.4 16.4
16.8 16.8 16.8 16.8 16.8
As with previous DWDM simulations, the mean value of 50 trials is plotted with
error bars indicating the highest and lowest values of required OSNR. These results
demonstrate that SPM compensation can still be used to increase the non-linear
threshold even when operating in a 50 GHz DWDM system under worst case
polarisation. The non-linear launch power limit was increased by more than 2 dB
(from -5 dBm to >-3 dBm) and the maximum OSNR margin was increased from 0.9
dB (at -6.5 dBm launch power with chromatic dispersion compensation only) to 2.5
dB (at -4 dBm launch power). Bar charts showing the distribution of the 50 trials at
each power level are shown in Figure 56 showing a similar trend to that displayed in
the results without SPM compensation (Figure 50). At the optimum launch power of
-4 dBm, the required OSNRs for the 50 trials ranged from 9.4 to 10.3 dB compared
with 8.8 dB back-to-back.
As with the previous results, the peak-to-mean ratio does not convincingly
explain the improved results with SPM compensation. As shown in Figure 57, the
ratio is not reduced by applying SPM compensation. However, the exponentially
increasing peak-to-mean ratio with launch power for the SPM compensated signals
does offer an explanation as to why XPM ultimately limits the transmission distance.
7.2
Peak-to-Mean Ratio, linear
6.8 With SPM

Compensation
6.6
6.4
Without SPM
Compensation
6.2
6
-12 -11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2
Launch Power, dBm
Figure 57: Peak-to-mean ratios against launch power for 5600 km NRZ-OOK EPD signals with
SPM compensation. The ratio without SPM compensation is indicated for comparison.
118
5.5. Discussion of EPD Transmission Limit Results
This chapter has explored the fundamental transmission limits of 10.7 Gb/s EPD
signals in single channel and DWDM configurations. It has been shown that, using
80 km spans, a maximum single channel transmission distance of 6800 km SSMF can
be achieved for NRZ-OOK signals. For duobinary EPD signals, it has been shown
that a combination of higher back-to-back required OSNR and lower tolerance to
SPM leads to a reduced maximum transmission distance of 5200 km SSMF. The
maximum distance and/or OSNR margin can be increased further by either
decreasing span length or applying SPM compensation. However, in practical terms,
implementation of the non-linear processing required for SPM compensation over
these distances is a considerable challenge. It has been shown that for launch powers
up to +1 dBm, well above those achievable in DWDM EPD transmission with SPM
compensation, back-propagation can be used with the step size of the split step
Fourier algorithm set equal to the span length, considerably simplifying the
calculations required to generate the SPM compensation parameters.
It has been shown that for DWDM transmission, which accounts for the majority
of long haul links, it is XPM which is the limiting factor in EPD transmission,
whether SPM compensation is applied or not. Using 50 GHz channel spacing and
worst case polarisation, XPM reduces the maximum transmission distance to 6000
km SSMF for NRZ-OOK signals. These results were obtained by taking the
maximum required OSNR obtained from 50 trials of a 9 channel DWDM system in
which random time delays were applied to each channel. This approach was used as
it allows reasonable simulation times and the mean and maximum values obtained at
each launch power form smooth curves giving some confidence in its accuracy.
However, with only 50 trials, it is unlikely that the worst case required OSNR has
been found. As the variation in required OSNR with data transmitted in adjacent
channels is of great practical importance in engineering a DWDM EPD system,
further work in this area is needed. In particular, the worst case bound and
probability density function of the required OSNR are required. This could be
119
obtained with a statistical study similar to the one presented here but with a greatly
increased number of trials or, ideally, by analytical means.
Even taking into account XPM penalties, applying SPM compensation is still
beneficial for DWDM systems. After 5600 km SSMF transmission, the non-linear
launch power limit was shown to be increased by over 2 dB and the required OSNR
margin was increased from 0.9 dB to 2.5 dB.
120
6. Limitations of Electronic Predistortion due
to Digital Signal Processing
In addition to the fundamental transmission limits of EPD signals described in
chapter 5, many implementation issues can affect the performance of an EPD
transmitter. These issues are discussed in this chapter assuming that a digital
implementation will be used.
The implementation issues can be broadly categorised into issues relating to the
calculation of the transmitted waveform in digital signal processing (DSP), and issues
relating to digital to analog conversion (DAC). In this chapter, the DSP options for
chromatic dispersion compensation are reviewed in section 6.1 with the aim of
finding DSP structures which are scalable to long haul transmission over SSMF.
Next, the long haul transmission simulations of chapter 5 (which used ideal EPD
signals) are repeated using a realistic DSP model in section 6.2. Using the simulation
results, the requirements of the DSP system to obtain low penalty transmission are
defined. Finally, the use of the duobinary modulation format is investigated in
section 6.3. It is shown that (despite its lower maximum transmission distances
shown in chapter 5) duobinary has important advantages in the implementation of
EPD systems including maximising the transmission distance for a given processor
memory size, simplification of the electronics and increasing the bit rate without
increasing the sample rate. The results of the chapter are summarised and the
implications discussed in section 6.4.
6.1. Digital Signal Processing Options for Chromatic

Dispersion Compensation
Modern CMOS technology has provided vast numbers of high yield transistors
on a chip, allowing DSP of huge complexity to be performed. The clock speed of the
transistors is not a limiting factor as processing can be performed in parallel at a
much lower rate than the required output rate, followed by a final multiplexing stage.
For this reason, the limitations in DSP are not fundamental but rather due to
121
Chapter 6 – Limitations of EPD due to DSP
engineering issues such as technology availability, maximum allowable power

consumption and chip area.
This section considers the most efficient DSP structures for compensating
chromatic dispersion in an EPD transmitter. Equation 2.11 gives the memory of the
fibre (in bits) due to chromatic dispersion induced pulse spreading. In order to
provide the low penalty compensation, the EPD processor must possess a similar
memory. In other words it must operate on sequences of bits roughly equal to the
fibre memory.
Both the dual drive and Cartesian MZMs (see section 2.5) are capable, under the
correct drive conditions, of producing the arbitrary field output required for EPD.
However, the choice of MZM type imposes restrictions on the nature of the DSP.
Chromatic dispersion in terms of optical field has a linear transfer function.
Nevertheless, it was shown in [Killey 2005] that non-linear filters are required to
generate the drive signals for chromatic dispersion compensation using a dual drive
MZM. On the other hand, the drive signals for the Cartesian MZM can be generated
by linear filters [McGhan 2006 B].
6.1.1. Look-up Tables

A look-up table (LUT) is the most general possible filter, enabling completely
arbitrary (including non-linear) responses. It is therefore suitable for compensation
using either the dual drive or Cartesian MZM. The general principle of the LUT is
shown in Figure 58 and its physical implementation is a random access memory
(RAM). In this case the LUT input (RAM address) is Mproc bits of the binary
sequence to be transmitted where Mproc is the processor memory. The output in each
clock cycle is Sb binary words of length RDAC bits to be sent to the DAC to generate
the required waveform. Hence the RAM requirement in bits is [Watts 2007 B]:
RAM = 2 ⋅ S b ⋅ RDAC ⋅ P
M proc
-(6.1)
where Sb is the number of samples per bit, P is the DSP parallelism required to obtain
sufficient speed from the electronics to generated the bit rate. The resources required
to implement parallel LUTs can be reduced to some extend by using multiple port
122
RAM. However, in practice each port requires its own decoding circuits so the
reduction in resources does not scale linearly by increasing the number of ports.
REGISTER
n bit 2n bit m bit
Input bit
LOOK-UP D/A Output
sequence
Address TABLE
Figure 58: Concept of LUT compensation [Killey 2005 A].
15
parallel=4
RAM Requirement, log(bits)
parallel=16
12 parallel=64
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000
10.7 Gb/s NRZ-OOK Transmission Distance, km
Figure 59: Memory requirements for implementing LUT for chromatic dispersion compensation
using 4-bit DAC and 2 Sa/b output for 16, 32 and 64 parallelism.
Increasing Mproc increases the processor memory and allows greater chromatic
dispersion to be compensated, whereas, increasing RDAC increases the resolution of
the output words allowing greater accuracy of the output waveform. The above
equation demonstrates the disadvantage of the LUT: the required memory increases
exponentially as the processor memory (and hence dispersion compensation) is
increased. For example in Figure 59, the RAM requirement is shown for a 4-bit 2
Sa/b DAC against required SSMF transmission distance for 10.7 Gb/s NRZ-OOK
123
signals. Parallelism of 4, 16 and 32 are shown corresponding to clock rates of 2.675

GHz, 668.8 MHz and 167.2 MHz respectively. It can be observed that for distances
up to around 1000 km SSMF, RAM requirements are feasible with current
technology, between 30 to 550 Mbits at 1000 km depending on parallelism. However,
for 2000 km transmission, the RAM requirement is 15 to 280 Tbits which could not
be integrated onto a single chip with current memory technology. It is worth noting
that in a real time application such as this, the memory controllers used by
microprocessors to access large external memories are not suitable as they have
variable latency. The x-axis of Figure 59 is the transmission distance for NRZ-OOK
assuming the value of 52.5 km per fibre memory bit calculated from equation 2.12.
6.1.2. FIR Filters

The finite impulse response (FIR) filter is a linear filter without feedback. It is
therefore only suitable for compensation of chromatic dispersion in EPD systems
using Cartesian MZMs. The direct form time domain representation is shown in
Figure 60 and its transfer function is [Proakis 1996]:
N
y (n ) = ∑ c (k ) ⋅ x (n − k ) -(6.2)
k =0
where x(n) are the input samples, c(k) are the FIR coefficients, N is the number of
taps and z-1 represents a delay of one sample period. The similarity with the analog
FFE described in chapter 3 can be observed. The processor memory of an FIR filter
is simply given by Mproc = N/Sb and N multipliers and N-1 adders are required. This
demonstrates the main advantage of the FIR filter over LUTs for chromatic dispersion
compensation: the resources required increase only linearly with the required
processor memory.
x(n)
z-1 z-1 z-1 z-1
c(0) x c(1) x c(2) x c(3) x c(4) x
y(n)
+ + + +
Figure 60: Direct form time domain representation of an FIR filter with 5 taps.
124
In many cases, implementing large FIR filters in the frequency domain is more
efficient than in the time domain [Proakis 1996]. As shown in Figure 61b, frequency
domain filtering involves Fourier transformation, via the FFT, of B input words into
the frequency domain. The complex-valued frequency domain representation is then
multiplied by the FFT of the inverse chromatic dispersion transfer function given by
equation 2.8. This FFT can be performed off-line so does not contribute to the real
time processing load. The compensated block is then inverse Fourier transformed.
Finally, a single output data stream is recovered using either the overlap-save or
overlap-add methods [Proakis 1996]. For chromatic dispersion a single process could
be used to generate both the real and imaginary waveforms as shown in Figure 61b.
By comparison, the most efficient time domain method of chromatic dispersion
compensation involves two FIR filters with real-valued coefficients as shown in
Figure 61a. The resources required to implement time and frequency domain FIR
filters will now be compared.
Input Bit Time Real Part of
Stream Domain FIR Required Waveform
creal(0…N-1)
Time Imaginary Part of

Domain FIR Required Waveform
cimag(0…N-1)
(a)
Real Part of
Input Bit
Required Waveform
Stream Complex
FFT IFFT
Multiplication
Inverse Imaginary Part of
Chromatic Required Waveform
Dispersion FFT
Impulse
Response (b)
Figure 61: FIR filters for chromatic dispersion compensation by (a) time domain (b) frequency
domain methods.
An FIR filter of N taps using the frequency domain overlap-save method and a
block size of B points produces L outputs, where L=B-N+1 [Proakis 1996]. It
125
follows from this that N ≤ B and for efficient computation, N « B. Both the FFT and
IFFT require (B/2)·log2B complex multiplications and B·log2B complex additions
while the chromatic dispersion compensation requires N complex multiplications.
Each complex multiplication requires four real valued multiplications while each
complex addition requires two real valued additions. Thus the total operations
required are:
4 B log 2 B + 4 B
real valued multiplications -(6.3)
B − N +1
4 B log 2 B
real valued additions
B − N +1
350
No. of Real Valued Multiplications
Time Domain
300 Frequency Domain, B=256
Frequency Domain, B=1024
250
200
150
100
50
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
No. of FIR Taps
Figure 62: Comparison of real valued multiplications required to implement time domain and
frequency domain FIR filters for chromatic dispersion compensation.
This compares with 2N real valued multiplications and 2(N-1) real valued
additions required to implement two time domain FIR filters. Figure 62 shows the
trend in number of multiplications with increasing N for time domain FIRs and
frequency domain FIRs using various block sizes. It can be observed that for N > 21
taps the frequency domain FIR uses fewer multiplications. This applies if all
multiplication operations use equal resources. For receiver based chromatic
126
dispersion compensation in which the input words are multiple bit words generated
by an ADC, this result may hold. However in the specific case of EPD, the input
words are 1-bit. The effect of this is that, in the time domain case, the multiplication
is simply a change of sign of the tap coefficient, whereas most of the multiplications
in the frequency domain case will be of two multiple bit words. This significantly
changes the threshold at which frequency domain filtering is more efficient.
One possible implementation of the time domain multipliers is shown in Figure
63a. The coefficients are stored as 4-bit 1’s complement words15. The 1-bit filter
input changes the sign of the coefficient which can be achieved using an XOR gate
for each bit as shown.
To calculate the number of gates required to implement the frequency domain
multipliers is more difficult. Within the FFT algorithm, there are many simple
multiplications by -1 or –j, but many are multiplications between multiple bit words.
[Proakis 1999] gives the signal-to-noise ratio of an FFT output due to rounding errors
as:
SNR = 22b−ν −1 -(6.4)
where the block size, B = 2ν and b is the number of bits in the input words to each
multiplier. Hence for a block size of 1024 points and SNR of over 20 dB, 9-bit
precision is required. A 9-bit by 9-bit multiplier requires 81 AND gates, 1 half adder
and 64 full adders [Roth 1992]. The half and full adders consist of 2 and 5 gates
respectively, making a total gate count of 403 per multiplier. This compares with b
gates for the 1-bit by b-bits multiplier required for the time domain multiplication. In
section 6.2 it is shown that 4-bit tap coefficients are sufficient for low penalty
operation using time domain FIR filters. The above analysis is rather simplistic and
an accurate assessment of the complexity of the frequency domain FIR approach
would require a thorough analysis of the effect of rounding errors including the
simple multiplications by -1 and –j and the addition operations as well as simulations
15
An n-bit 1’s complement number consists of a sign bit (1 = -ve, 0 = +ve) followed by n-1 bits
representing the magnitude. To change the sign of a 1’s complement number each bit is inverted – this
makes 1-bit by n-bit multiplication as required in FIR filters for EPD very simple to implement.
Addition and subtraction of 1’s complement numbers are also conveniently achieved, unlike the sign-
magnitude format.
127
to demonstrate the effect on overall performance of the EPD system. However, it

seems reasonable to use a conservative rule of thumb that the multipliers for the
frequency domain FIR will use at least an order of magnitude more gates than for the
time domain FIR. Thus in the specific case of EPD, time domain FIR will be more
efficient for FIR filters up to around 200 taps or 100 bits processor memory. Using
the figure of 52 km/bit determined from equation 2.10, this is equivalent to 5200 km
SSMF, close to the maximum transmission distance found in chapter 4.
d
c(0) 4-bit word to adder circuits

d c(n) out(n)
0 0 0
c(1)
0 1 1
c(2) 1 0 1
1 1 0
c(3)
Figure 63: Implementation of 1 x 4-bit multipliers for time domain FIR implementation with
truth table.
A further choice to be made using the time domain FIR is whether to exploit the
symmetry of the chromatic dispersion transfer function. An FIR filter which exploits
symmetry is shown in Figure 64. The advantage of exploiting symmetry is to reduce
the number of multiplications to (N+1)/2.
x(n)
z-1 z-1
+ +
z-1 z-1
c(0) x c(1) x c(2) x
y(n)
+ +
Figure 64: A 5-tap FIR filter exploiting impulse response symmetry [c(3)=c(1), c(4)=c(0)].
128
In the specific case of EPD using 1-bit inputs and 4-bit coefficients, the FIR
exploiting symmetry has (N-1)/2 1-bit adders before the multiplications. There are
(N+1)/2 multiplications, each 2 x 4-bit. After the multipliers, there are (N-1)/2
multiple bit adders. In the case in which symmetry is not exploited, there are N 1 x 4-
bit multiplications and M-1 multiple bit adders. In both cases the precision required
from the multiple bit adders is given by:
Radd = ceil (RFIR − 1+ log 2 [N ]) in bits -(6.5)
where RFIR is the precision of the tap coefficients in bits and the ceil(.) function
represents rounding up to the nearest integer. The calculation of gate counts for the
two cases is summarised in Table 5. The total gate count against number of taps is
plotted in Figure 65 for the case of 4-bit tap weights. The discontinuities are due to
the ceil(.) function in equation 5.8. It is found that exploiting symmetry results in a
lower gate count for N > 3 which will be the case for all practical EPD systems.
Table 5
Gate count calculations for time domain FIR filters with and without exploitation of
symmetry
Item No. No. of Gates Each Total Gates
Non-Symmetry
1 x 4 bit multipliers N 4 4N
Adders N-1 5Radd (5 gates per 5Radd(N-1)

full adder circuit)
Symmetry Exploited
1-bit adders (N-1)/2 2 N-1
2 x 4 bit multipliers (N+1)/2 18 9(N+1)
Adders (N-1)/2 5Radd 2.5Radd(N-1)
There is one situation in which exploiting symmetry would not be desirable:

where another linear filter with a non-symmetrical transfer function must be
129
implemented at the transmitter for example for pulse shaping or compensation of non-
ideal components [McGhan 2006 B]. In this case, it would be most efficient to
combine the two filters into a single filter with 1-bit inputs rather than use two filters
and lose the advantage of 1-bit inputs in the second filter.
As with LUTs, FIR filters must be implemented in parallel to obtain sufficiently
fast operation to reach optical bit rates such as 10 Gb/s. In addition, due to the more
complex real time processing required, pipelined structures will probably also be
required. An example of real time FIR implementation for EPD is given in chapter 7.
5000
Non-Symmetry
Symmetry Exploited
4000
Number of Gates
3000
2000
1000
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Number of FIR Filter Taps
Figure 65: Gate counts against number of taps for FIR filters with and without exploitation of
symmetry.
6.1.3. Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) Filters

It is known that for a given transfer function, infinite impulse response (IIR)
filters, which are digital filters employing feedback, use fewer taps than for FIR
filters [Proakis 1996]. In [Goldfarb 2007] it was shown that IIR filter transfer
functions can accurately compensate for chromatic dispersion for coherent receiver
applications. The number of arithmetic operations required to implement a serial
130
(non-pipelined) FIR filter of order NFIR compared with an IIR filter of order NIIR, is
NFIR/(2NIIR). On this basis, it was shown that the number of operations could be
reduced by a factor of approximately 2.5 by using IIR filters. However the practical
implementation was not considered. Due to the speed of DSP required for optical
communication at 10 Gb/s or above, parallel and pipelined structures are required.
Due to the feedback employed in IIR filters, special techniques such as scattered and
clustered look-ahead are required to use parallel and pipelined methods in IIR filters
[Parhi 1999] which will add to complexity. Therefore it is not clear at the current
time how the overall efficiency of IIR filters compares with FIR filters. This is a
subject for further research.
6.1.4. Hybrid Structures

In previous sections it has been shown that (assuming a Cartesian MZM) FIR
filters can be used to provide compensation which scales linearly with chromatic
dispersion, whereas LUT can provide a non-linear response. This opens the
possibility of using FIR filters and LUTs simultaneously to combat various
transmission impairments and system imperfections. The EPD system demonstrated
by Nortel [McGhan 2006 B] uses FIR filters for chromatic dispersion compensation
and pulse shaping and LUTs for SPM compensation and equalising the non-ideal
response of the amplifiers, MZM, and arrayed waveguide. However, details of the
implementation were not provided. Simultaneous compensation of chromatic
dispersion and nonlinear effects are considered further in section 8.4.2.
6.2. Overall Effect of Digital Signal Processing for Long

Haul Transmission
Section 6.1 demonstrated that time domain FIR filters exploiting symmetry offer
the most efficient method of implementing chromatic dispersion compensation for
EPD systems. In this section, the 10.7 Gb/s NRZ-OOK long haul transmission
simulations of chapter 5 are repeated using 2 Sa/b low resolution DACs and
chromatic dispersion compensation based on time domain FIR filters. 2 Sa/b
operation is assumed because optical bit rates are likely to always push the
131
performance of the electronics to their limits, so oversampling is not practical. It will

be shown in any case that 2 Sa/b operation causes negligible penalty.
The simulation results are compared with the results for ideal EPD signals from
chapter 5 to find the overall effect of DSP parameters on transmission distance.
6.2.1. Simulation Technique

The MATLAB simulation code described in chapter 5 was used with additional
code written by the author to simulate the DSP. The fibre transmission and Monte-
Carlo BER estimation models used were identical to those described in chapter 5
which the exception that transmission was linear (i.e. the non-linear parameter of the
fibre, γ = 0). This change was made as the purpose of this section is to investigate the
accuracy with which the DSP can generate the waveforms which compensate for
chromatic dispersion.
The transmitter model is shown in Figure 66. The 29 bit DeBruijn sequence was
processed by two FIR filters using real valued coefficients and 2 Sa/b time resolution.
The filters applied a chromatic dispersion compensation function (described in the
following section) only and no modifications were made for pulse shaping or other
compensation. The 210 (= 29 bits x 2 Sa/b) output samples, sj, were quantised so that
the output samples took only integer values from zero to 2 RDAC − 1 where RDAC was
the DAC amplitude resolution in bits. The DAC was modeled by upsampling to 16
samples per bit (an ideal sample and hold response) and applying a 4th order Bessel
low pass filter with cut off frequency of 10 GHz. The gain and offset of the two drive
signals were obtained from back-propagation simulations. Finally, the two signals
were applied to the ideal Cartesian MZM transfer function given by equation 2.20.
As discussed in section 2.5, the Cartesian MZM is approximately a linear IQ
modulator provided that the drive voltage swing is kept low compared with the
switching voltage of the modulator. In this work both drive voltage swing was
maintained below 0.25Vπ.
132
Gain and
FIR DAC Bessel
Quantise Offset
(Real) (upsample) LPF Control
DeBruijn
Sequence CW Laser
π/2
Generator
Gain and
FIR DAC Bessel
Quantise Offset
(Imag) (upsample) LPF Control
Figure 66: Transmitter model used in simulations to determine the effect of implementation.
6.2.2. Calculation of FIR Filter Coefficients

The real and imaginary parts of the impulse responses required to compensate
for chromatic dispersion in an EPD system can be found by applying an impulse to
the transfer function of equation 2.8. An example for 1200 km SSMF is shown (by
the solid lines) in Figure 67. A discrete time approximation of the impulse response
and hence the FIR tap weights can be obtained by sampling these curves at 2 Sa/b as
shown by the points in Figure 67. However, it can be observed that the frequency of
the responses increases as the absolute value of time increases. Therefore if many
taps were used, aliasing would occur and the filter response would be poor. In
[Savory 2008], the maximum number of taps which can be used before aliasing
occurs was derived as:
D λ2 L
N =2 +1 -(6.6)
2cT 2
where T is the sampling period. However it was acknowledged in [Savory 2008] that
in practice fewer taps could be used without significantly affecting performance. In
general the time period covered by the filter should be approximately equal to the
fibre memory due to chromatic dispersion. This was given in terms of bit periods in
equation 2.11 using the approximation that the bandwidth of an NRZ-OOK signal is
1.4 times the bit rate. The number of taps using the fibre memory approach would be:
[ ]
N = S b ⋅ round (M fibre ) + 1 -(6.7)
where Sb is the number of samples per bit and round(·) is the operation of rounding to
133
the nearest integer. It can be shown that equations 6.6 and 6.7 have the same
dependencies but with different constants. Using Ns = 2 Sa/b operation with
dispersion, D = 17 ps/(nm·km) and wavelength, λ = 1.55µm, and bit rate, rb = 10.7
Gb/s, equation 6.7 gives a requirement of 4.4 taps per 100 km SSMF whereas
equation 6.6 gives 6.3 taps per 100 km. The ideal number of taps will be investigated
in section 6.2.3.
The chromatic dispersion impulse response was simply truncated to N taps (i.e.
with a rectangular window). Various other window functions were tried without any
benefit to the overall performance. This remains a subject for further investigation.
0.04
Real Amplitude
0.02
-0.02
-0.04
-2000 -1500 -1000 -500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
0.04
Imaginary Amplitude
0.02
-0.02
-0.04
-2000 -1500 -1000 -500 0 500 1000 1500 2000
Time, ps
Figure 67: Impulse responses of real and imaginary chromatic dispersion compensation
functions (solid lines) and 2 Sa/b FIR coefficients (points) for 1200 km SSMF. 55 coefficients are
shown.
The coefficients are then rescaled and quantised such that the values are integers
from − 2 RFIR −1 to + 2 RFIR −1 . The output values are:
134
( )
 s j 2 RFIR −1 − 0.5 
q j = round   -(6.8)
 max( s ) − min( s ) 
where sj are the coefficient samples and round(.) is again the operation of rounding to
the nearest integer.
6.2.3. Simulation Results

The simulation was run for back-to-back and for transmission distances of 400 to
5600 km in 80 km steps. The results using 4.4 taps per 100 km for 3-bit, 4-bit and
unquantised DACs are shown in Figure 68. In each case, the tap weights were
quantised to the same resolution as the DAC. It can be observed that there was a
variation between transmission distances which did not increase with distance. The
variation was also not eliminated by using an unquantised DAC. Therefore, the
variation must be due to the filter design process described in section 6.2.2 and could
be reduced by a refinement of this process. However, the difference between
maximum and minimum required OSNR for the unquantised DAC was only 0.6 dB.
It must also be remembered that the 99 % confidence interval of the Monte-Carlo
simulation was ±0.17 dB.
Figure 69 shows the mean required OSNR for all transmission distances from
400 to 5600 km. Several conclusions can be drawn from this graph. Firstly, equation
6.7 (4.4 taps per 100 km) underestimates the number of taps required for optimum
performance. On the other hand, there is no advantage in choosing f higher than 5.3
taps per 100 km (lower than the value given by equation 6.6). However, the mean
penalty when using 4.4 taps per 100 km (compared with 5.3 taps per 100 km) was
only 0.3 dB. Using greater than 7.2 taps 100 km, the performance was degraded due
to aliasing. Secondly, the results for 5-bit and unquantised DACs were almost
indistinguishable. Therefore there is no significant advantage in having greater than
5-bit DAC resolution. Thirdly, with 5-bit DAC resolution and 5.3 taps per 100 km,
the mean required OSNR was roughly equal to the mean back-to-back required
OSNR, therefore there was no mean penalty for EPD with respect to back-to-back
operation. The mean penalty using 4-bit DAC resolution (with 5.3 taps per 100 km)
was only 0.2 dB. The maximum required OSNR found using 5.3 taps per 100 km and
135
5-bit DAC was 9.1 dB, a penalty of 0.4 dB compared with the mean back-to-back
value.
11.5
3-bit
4-bit
11 Unquantised
Required OSNR, dB
10.5
10
9.5
8.5
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Figure 68: Required OSNR against transmission distance using the truncation filter design
method, 4.4 taps per 100 km and 3-bit, 4bit and unquantised DACs.
12
3-bit
4-bit
11.5
Mean Required OSNR, dB
5-bit
Unquantised
11
Equation 6.7
10.5 Equation 6.6
10
9.5
9
Mean Back-to-Back
8.5
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number of Taps per 100 km SSMF
Figure 69: Mean required OSNR for transmission distances of 800 – 5600 km against number of
taps for 3, 4, 5-bit and unquantised DACs.
136
1
3-bit
0.9 4-bit
Standard Deviation of Required 5-bit
0.8
Unquantised
0.7
OSNR, dB
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
Back-to-back Standard Deviation
0
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number of Taps per 100 km SSMF
Figure 70: Standard deviation of required OSNR for transmission distances of 800 – 5600 km
against number of taps for 3, 4, 5-bit and unquantised DACs.
0.6 11
Standard Deviation of Required
0.5 10.5
Mean Required OSNR, dB

0.4 10
OSNR, dB
0.3 9.5
0.2 9
0.1 8.5
0 8
2-bit 3-bit 4-bit 5-bit Unquantised
Tap Weight Resolution
Figure 71: Effect of varying FIR tap weight resolution on mean and standard deviation of
required OSNR for transmission distances of 400 – 5600 km, 5.3 taps per 100 km and 4-bit
resolution DAC.
137
Figure 70 shows the standard deviation of required OSNRs for all transmission
distances from 400 to 5600 km. Using 5.3 taps per 100 km, the standard deviation
was roughly 0.1 dB for a DAC resolution of 4 bits or greater. For comparison, the
standard deviation of back-to-back required OSNR (due to Monte-Carlo) was 0.05 dB.
This demonstrates that roughly half the variation observed in the results was due to
the filter design process. The DAC resolution, when 4-bits or above, is not the
limiting factor.
Finally the effect of tap weight resolution was investigated. Figure 71 shows the
effect of varying the tap weight resolution on the mean and standard deviation of
required OSNR for transmission distances of 400 to 5600 km using a 4-bit DAC. It
can be observed that 4-bit resolution was sufficient to avoid significant mean penalty.
The mean penalty using 3-bit resolution was only 0.2 dB. For values above 3-bits,
the variation in results was not dependent on tap weight resolution.
6.3. Benefits of the Duobinary Modulation Format for

EPD Implementation
Signals using the duobinary modulation format have a narrower bandwidth than
NRZ-OOK signals of the same bit rate (see section 2.4.2). In EPD therefore, it may
be possible to use just 1 Sa/b operation to generate the required waveform. This
would allow a considerable simplification of the required electronics for a given bit
rate. In addition, the narrow bandwidth of the duobinary format, also increases
chromatic dispersion tolerance in turn reducing the fibre memory for a given distance.
This also may simplify the electronics for EPD, as the processor memory can be
reduced for a given transmission distance. The benefits of the duobinary format for
EPD in terms of 1 Sa/b penalties and processor memory requirements are investigated
in this section.
6.3.1. Simulation Technique

To investigate implementation parameters, numerical simulations were carried
out for the system shown in Figure 72 . A 10.7 Gb/s, 218 bit DeBruijn sequence was
generated. It was differentially precoded only for duobinary. The sequence was used
138
to access look-up tables (LUTs) to obtain the two MZM drive signals with either 1 or
2 Sa/b sample rate. LUTs are used in this case as they allow an arbitrary response.
Hence it is convenient to compare modulation formats with the same arrangement.
The two signals were up-sampled using sample and hold interpolation to
represent analog waveforms and filtered using 4th order Bessel filters with a cut-off
frequency of 4.9 GHz for duobinary and 10 GHz for NRZ-OOK. The two drive
signals were applied to a Cartesian MZM transfer function (equation 2.20). The same
linear fibre transmission and receiver model and semi-analytical BER estimation
technique used for the simulations described in Chapter 3 was used 16 . The
performance criteria used was the required OSNR (measured in 0.1 nm bandwidth)
for a BER of 10-5.
DeBruijn Bessel
Sequence DAC
Generator Filter Non-linear
Transmission
CW
LUTs Rx
Laser π/2
T xN
Bessel Cartesian
Precoder DAC
Filter MZM
Figure 72: Simulation technique for investigation of implementation parameters. The precoder
was only used for duobinary transmission [Watts 2007 A].
The LUT entries for a given transmission distance were generated using back-
propagation as shown in Figure 73. Firstly, a 2Mproc DeBruijn sequence was
generated, where Mproc is the processor memory to be implemented. This was low
pass filtered using a Bessel response with cut-off frequencies of 2.5 GHz for
duobinary and 10 GHz for OOK and applied to a MZM. The resulting waveform was
the target waveform required at the receiver containing every bit sequence of length
Mproc. This waveform was back-propagated by applying the transfer function for
chromatic dispersion (equation 2.8).
16
This work was carried out before the simulations of chapter 5 and section 6.2. The reason for the
shift in simulation techniques and target BERs is the growing acceptance of FEC in optical
communications – see section 2.3 for details.
139
The resulting waveform, ETX, is therefore the one that must be transmitted to
obtain the target waveform at the receiver. The two MZM drive waveforms for the
generation of ETX were obtained using the reverse MZM transfer functions:
Vπ  −1  2 ETX (t ) ⋅ cosφ (t )  
d re = cos  

π   Ein  
-(6.9)
V   2 E (t ) ⋅ sin φ (t )  
d im = π cos −1  TX 

π   E in  
which are found by rearranging equation 2.20 and where Vπ is the modulator
switching voltage, |Ein| is the CW laser input and:
ETX (t ) = ETX (t ) ⋅ exp( j ⋅ φ (t )) -(6.10)
DAC equalisation filters (described below) were applied to both real and imaginary
drive signals and each signal was sampled at 1 or 2 Sa/b and quantised as required.
Finally, the one (1 Sa/b case) or two (2 Sa/b) samples to be output for each
transmitted bit sequence of length Mproc were extracted. These values form the
entries in the LUTs for transmission.
DeBruijn
Sequence
Generator
Bessel
Filter
-D
dre
CW laser ETX DAC
Reverse Sample + Extract
Input Equalisation
Chromatic MZM TF Filters
Quantize LUTs
MZM Dispersion dim
Figure 73: Technique for obtaining LUT entries using back-propagation. Also shown are the eye
diagram for the duobinary case and the transfer function of the inverse sinc equalisation filters
[Watts 2007 A].
The requirement for the DAC equalisation filters in Figure 73 requires further
explanation as these are essential for optimum performance using 1 Sa/b DAC. The
Nyquist sampling theorem [Proakis 1996] states that if the highest frequency in an
analog signal is FMAX and the signal is sampled at 2 FMAX (the Nyquist rate), the
signal can be exactly recreated from the samples provided that a sinc interpolation
140
function is used. Sinc interpolation is impractical particularly for low oversampling

ratios as assumed in this work. A practical DAC consists of a sample and hold circuit
followed by a low pass smoothing filter as shown in Figure 74a. The sample and
hold circuit holds each sample value for the sample period, T as shown in Figure 74b.
Taking the Fourier transform, it can be observed that the sample and hold circuit has a
low pass filtering effect on the analog output given by the frequency domain transfer
function:
sin (πTf )
H(f ) = -(6.11)
πTf
The distorting effect of frequency components |f|>1/(2T) can be removed to a large
extent by the low pass filter. In many applications, the low pass filtering effect on
components |f|<1/(2T) is dealt with by using a large oversampling ratio. Again this is
not viable in optical communications in which optical bit rates will always stretch the
capabilities of the electronics.
Sample Low Pass

DAC
and Hold Filter
(a)
Ideal DAC
response
Practical
DAC
response
↔
(b)
Figure 74: (a) A practical DAC and (b) the Fourier transform pair of a sample and hold circuit,
reproduced from [Proakis 2001].
In this work it was found that the low pass filtering effect of the DAC in terms of
final BER was negligible in the 2 Sa/b case. However, for 1 Sa/b, performance can
141
be improved by the use of filters to equalise the DAC response. In order to avoid
adding any further real-time DSP or microwave filtering components, these filters
were applied during the LUT generation process as shown in Figure 73. The ideal
equalisation transfer function is:
 sin (πf )
2 − 0 ≤ f ≤ FS / 2 -(6.12)
H( f ) =  πf
 0 f > FS / 2
where FS = 1/T is the sample rate. A 46 tap FIR filter was designed, using the
MATLAB function ‘firgr’, to approximate this response. The frequency response is
shown in Figure 75. It was found to be optimum to allow overshoot for frequencies
above FS/2 (which are removed by the post-DAC low pass filter) rather than allow
ripple in the response below FS/2.
1.4
1.2
Gain (linear)
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
f/Fs
Figure 75: Response of the filters designed for DAC equalisation [Watts 2007 A].
6.3.2. Effect of Implementation Parameters on EPD Performance

Figure 76 shows the performance of 1 and 2 Sa/b operation using duobinary and
NRZ-OOK with LUTs of 15-bit memory and 5 bit resolution over a range of
transmission distances. The required OSNR penalties are shown with respect to the
back-to-back case for 2 Sa/b duobinary. Using duobinary rather than NRZ-OOK
considerably increased transmission distance but incurred a 0.85 dB back-to-back
142
penalty. The penalty for using 1 Sa/b duobinary, compared to 2 Sa/b duobinary, was
less than 1.5 dB for distances up to 600 km. The reduced 1 Sa/b performance was
due to the fact that the two MZM drive signals were not strictly band-limited to half
the bit rate. 1 Sa/b NRZ-OOK suffered from over 2.5 dB penalty as well as reduced
transmission distance.
21
Duobinary, 2 Sa/b
20 Duobinary, 1 Sa/b
OOK-NRZ, 2 Sa/b
Required OSNR, dB
19 OOK-NRZ, 1 Sa/b
18
17
16
15
14
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Figure 76: Required OSNR for 10-5 BER using 15-bit processor memory, 5-bit resolution
duobinary and NRZ-OOK using 1 and 2Sa/b DSP [Watts 2007 A].
In addition to the penalties discussed above, it can also be observed that the
transmission distance obtained using the 15-bit LUT was reduced due to using 1 Sa/b
in both the NRZ-OOK and duobinary cases. Figure 77 shows the transmission
distance (given by the distance at which required OSNR penalty reaches 2 dB)
obtained using LUT sizes of 7 to 17 bits. 1 Sa/b NRZ-OOK is not shown as the 2 dB
penalty distance was very low for all LUT sizes. Comparing the gradients of each
line, using 2 Sa/b duobinary gave a maximum distance of 75 km per processor
memory bit compared with 52 km/bit for NRZ-OOK. This is as expected due to the
narrow bandwidth of duobinary and hence its naturally greater tolerance to chromatic
143
dispersion. It is shown that 1 Sa/b duobinary performs as well as 2 Sa/b NRZ-OOK

with a gradient of 52 km per LUT bit.
1400
Duobinary, 1 Sa/b
Duobinary, 2 Sa/b
1200
OOK-NRZ, 2 Sa/b
1000
800
600
400
200
7 9 11 13 15 17
LUT Address Size, bits
Figure 77: Transmission distance for 2 dB required OSNR penalty as LUT size is varied [Watts
2007 A].
Finally, the DAC amplitude resolution was considered. Figure 78 shows the
required OSNR penalty as the DAC resolution is varied from 3 to 8-bits for NRZ-
OOK and duobinary. Duobinary, particularly in the 1 Sa/b case, was more sensitive
to coarse resolution than NRZ-OOK, which can be explained by the fact that a greater
range of the modulator is used for duobinary generation. 5-bit DAC resolution gave
less than 0.35 dB penalty for both 1 and 2 Sa/b duobinary. For 4-bit DAC, the
penalties for 2 Sa/b NRZ-OOK, 2 Sa/b duobinary and 1 Sa/b duobinary were 0.3, 0.6
and 1.4 dB respectively.
144
24
Duobinary, 1 Sa/b
22 Duobinary, 2 Sa/b
Required OSNR, dB
OOK-NRZ, 1 Sa/b
20 OOK-NRZ, 2 Sa/b
18
16
14
3 4 5 6 7 8
DAC resolution, bits
Figure 78: Effect of DAC resolution after 500 km transmission using 15-bit LUT [Watts 2007 A].
6.4. Discussion of EPD Limitations due to DSP
This chapter has investigated the penalties due to DSP for chromatic dispersion
compensation in EPD systems. It was shown (in section 6.1) that time domain FIR
filters can be efficiently implemented for EPD as the filter inputs are 1-bit words and
that the complexity scales linearly with chromatic dispersion. The complexity of the
required DSP was quantified by numerical simulation (section 6.2), demonstrating
that zero mean penalty could be achieved by using 5-bit DAC resolution, only 5.3
FIR filter taps per 100 km and FIR tap weights quantised to the same resolution as the
DAC.
The simulations used a simple technique for chromatic dispersion compensation
FIR filter design involving truncating the required impulse response with a
rectangular window. This was shown to result in a variation in required OSNR with
transmission distance. Further work would be required to optimise the filter design
process. Improved required OSNR could also have been obtained by combining the
chromatic dispersion compensation filter with a pulse shaping filter [McGhan 2006
145
B]. However, the maximum penalty found using 5.3 taps per 100 km with 5-bit DAC
for transmission distances of 400 to 5600 km was only 0.4 dB. Hence, further work
on pulse shaping and filter design would have limited impact on performance.
It was also shown in the simulations that the required DAC resolution for a given
mean required OSNR was not dependent on distance. To increase the transmission
distance, the only DSP parameter which must be changed is processor memory.
The benefits of using the duobinary modulation format rather than NRZ-OOK
were investigated (in section 6.3). It was found (as in the simulations of chapter 5)
that duobinary has a back-to-back penalty of 0.8 dB. However the transmission
distance possible for a given processor memory (LUT address size or number of FIR
taps) was increased by 50 %. In other words, the DSP resources required for
chromatic dispersion compensation using FIR filters (or any method which scales
linearly with distance) are reduced by 33 %. However with the continued rapid
increase in the number of CMOS transistors available on a chip it could be argued
that this advantage is not so significant. The bottleneck with high speed DSP is
usually the converter sample rate. Reducing the DAC sample rate to 1 Sa/b is
therefore highly advantageous, particularly as bit rates are increased. Using 1 Sa/b
DSP, the duobinary format has a clear advantage over NRZ-OOK. The back-to-back
penalty for 1 Sa/b duobinary compared with 2 Sa/b NRZ-OOK was less than 2 dB
and the transmission distance for a given processor memory was equal. Thus the
required DSP resources are reduced by a factor of two (as only 1 sample is generated
per unit time) as well as the reduced DAC sample rate. 1 Sa/b NRZ-OOK by
comparison suffers from penalties of around 3.5 dB and a restricted transmission
distance. 1 Sa/b duobinary could therefore provide a path to increasing EPD bit rates
without increasing the sample rate of the DAC, particularly in relatively short links in
which the back-to-back penalty is not problematic.
146
7. An FPGA-based Electronic Predistortion
Transmitter using Real Time Digital Signal
Processing
There has been considerable recent interest in high speed electronic digital signal
processing (DSP) for overcoming transmission impairments in long haul optical
transmission. As has already been discussed in earlier chapters, several techniques
including MLSE [Färbert 2004], EPD [McNicol 2005] and coherent phase and
polarisation diversity reception [Roberts 2007] have been demonstrated using
integrated circuit implementations. While offering optimum performance, the cost
and inflexibility of custom integrated circuit design is prohibitive for experimental
work. Off line DSP has been used to demonstrate proof of principle. For instance,
EPD waveforms can be calculated off-line and loaded into arbitrary waveform
generators [McGhan 2006]. For receiver based techniques, waveforms can be
captured on high speed digital sampling scopes and processed offline, for example to
demonstrate MLSE [Poggiolini 2006] or coherent phase and polarisation diversity
[Savory 2007]. However, these approaches do not prove real time viability. An
alternative is the use of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) which are low cost
and reprogrammable. This chapter presents the first 10.7 Gb/s FPGA-based EPD
transmitter with real time 2 Sa/b DSP for generating predistorted NRZ-OOK signals.
Firstly, section 7.1 provides an introduction to FPGAs and the features available on
the latest devices which make high speed DSP possible. The top level design of the
transmitter is discussed in section 7.2. As suitable integrated circuits were not
available at the time of hardware construction the DACs consisted of discrete
components. The performance of these DACs are assessed in section 7.3. Next the
design of the DSP for chromatic dispersion compensation on the FPGAs is discussed
in section 7.4. A 55-tap FIR filter was constructed on each of the two FPGAs
demonstrating that the latest FPGAs are suitable for the implementation of complex
DSP for 10 Gb/s operation. In section 7.5, the transmission performance is described
147
Chapter 7 – An FPGA based EPD Transmitter
in recirculating loop experiments of up to 1200 km of SSMF. Finally the potential

for improving the transmitter performance is discussed in section 7.6.
7.1. Introduction to the Field Programmable Gate Array

(FPGA)
Figure 79 shows the structure of a typical FPGA, although in practice there are
differences in implementation between products and manufacturers. The FPGA
consists of an array of logic cells containing look-up tables (LUT), flip-flops and
multiplexers. The logical function of the cell can be designed by programming the
LUT when the FPGA is switched on. The cells are connected by an interconnect
network which is itself programmable using a switching fabric. The network is also
connected to input/output pins for off-chip communications. Maximum clock rates
on the latest FPGAs are of the order of 500 MHz, lower than for custom application
specific integrated circuits (ASIC). In large designs, the useable clock rate can be
much lower than this due to routing delays.
High speed DSP for optical communications requires very high off-chip
communications bandwidths. For example, generation of 10.7 Gb/s EPD signals
using 2 Sa/b DSP and 4-bit DAC resolution requires a total output bit rate of 85.6
Gb/s. Therefore, one of the important features of the latest high-end FPGAs in this
application is the integration of high speed serial transceivers with bit rates of up to
6.5 Gb/s17 on the chip edge. These are time division multiplexer/demultiplexers with
a parallel input clocked at the speed of the FPGA logic (< 500 MHz) and a high speed
serial output. Combining these outputs externally enables very high off-chip
bandwidth. However, as the FPGA logic is clocked at less than 500 MHz, highly
parallel structures are required to implement DSP at optical bit rates.
17
Xilinx, Altera and Lattice all produce FPGAs with integrated serial transceivers rated at this bit rate
at the time of writing – the highest bit rate available on currently commercially available FPGA.
Xilinx has sold the Virtex-II ProX device with 10 Gb/s transceivers but this was later withdrawn. The
Virtex-4 FX series was originally intended to have 10.3 Gb/s transceivers, but this was later revised to
6.2 Gb/s. Serial speeds on the current Virtex-5 are similar to that of the Virtex-4. However, given
current trends in digital design, it is likely that high speed serial transceivers will become the norm for
future FPGAs and serial speeds will continue to increase.
148
The latest FPGAs also feature other peripheral devices such as clock managers,
random access memory (RAM) and shift registers.
Figure 79: Typical structure of an FPGA, reproduced from [Ercegovac 1998].
7.2. Top Level Design
Figure 80 shows the top level design of the EPD transmitter. A Cartesian MZM
was used, driven by two analog drive signals Vreal and Vimag representing the real and
imaginary parts of the transmitted field. Generating a 10.7 Gb/s signal using 2 Sa/b
DSP requires DACs operating at 21.4 GSa/s which were not commercially available
at the time these experiments were carried out. Hence each of the drive signals were
generated by multiplexing and combining the outputs of the serial transceivers
available on the FPGA. As the highest serial output available from today’s FPGAs is
around 6.5 Gb/s, 4:1 external time division multiplexing was required to generate the
21.4 Gb/s bit streams for the DACs (i.e. 4 x 5.35 Gb/s = 21.4 Gb/s). 4-bit DAC
resolution was selected as mean penalties of less than 0.2 dB were found in this case
by simulations in section 6.2.3. To build a 4-bit resolution DAC, 16 serials outputs
were required for each MZM drive signal. The maximum number of high speed
serial outputs available on a single FPGA was 24. Therefore two FPGAs were used,
one for the DSP which calculates the drive signal representing the real part of the
field to be transmitted (Vreal) and one for calculation of the imaginary drive signal
(Vimag) . The DSP partitions well into two FPGAs as Vreal and Vimag processing can be
carried out independently. In addition, two FPGAs offer increased overall DSP
149
processing power. The analog signals were generated by summing four 21.4 Gb/s bit
streams using a passive combiner. The 4-bit resolution output is achieved by
attenuating the bit streams by 0, 6, 12 and 18 dB respectively before combination.
One limitation on the performance of the system was due to the AC coupled inputs of
the discrete 4:1 multiplexers. This limited the maximum run length on each FPGA
output without errors occurring.
Phase
Shifters 4:1
MUX
P Attenuators
Virtex-4 P
Evaluation P 0dB
P
Board
P MSB
(Vreal DSP)
P
P 6dB
P
P +
P
P 12dB
P Vreal
P LSB Bias
P
P 18dB
P
+
Vreal
167.2 MHz
Pattern 10.7 GHz
FPGA Laser
Synch. Clock to all MZM
Clock
Pulse MUXs
Vimag
P +
Virtex-4 P
P 0dB
Evaluation Vimag
P
Board Bias
P MSB
(Vimag DSP) P
P 6dB
P
P +
P
P 12dB
P
LSB
P
P
P 18dB
P
Figure 80: Top level transmitter design.
150
It is essential for successful operation that all 32 FPGA serial outputs and 8
multiplexer outputs are synchronised and aligned. To ensure synchronisation, the
clocks for the FPGAs and multiplexers were derived from the same 10.7 Gb/s
reference clock as shown in Figure 81. The 10.7 GHz crystal oscillator output was
distributed to the eight multiplexers and frequency divided by 64 to provide the 167.2
MHz clocks for the FPGAs. On the FPGAs, the 167.2 MHz clock was further split
into reference clocks to drive the high speed serial transceivers and a clock to drive
the DSP logic.
+
To VREAL
FPGA + FREQUENCY TO
S
To VIMAG DIVIDER
P + MULTIPLEXERS
FPGA
REFERENCE
CLOCK
(10.7 GHz)
+
Figure 81: Clocking scheme for the transmitter.
CURRENT
From 32 [31-delay:0]
WORD
DSP REGISTER
(32 bit) TRANMITTER 32
INPUT To
64
REGISTER Transmitter
(32 bit)
LAST WORD [31:32-delay]
REGISTER
(32 bit)
Figure 82: Delay circuits at the input of each FPGA transmitter to allow alignment to within one
bit period.
The 32 FPGA outputs were time aligned to within one bit period using fixed
delay circuits implemented on the FPGAs as shown in Figure 82. The value of delay
(in integer bits) required for each FPGA output was determined by measurement and
added to the FPGA design code. Delay variations of less than one bit period were
removed by the external phase shifters shown in Figure 80. The high speed serial
151
transceivers on some families of FPGA, including the Virtex-4 used in this work, also
suffer from a random reset-dependent delay of two integer bits [Winzer 2008]. To
overcome this, a variable delay circuit was also added and the FPGA outputs were
aligned using a simple manual procedure each time the FPGAs were switched on.
A pattern synchronisation pulse was sent between the two FPGAs each pattern
cycle to ensure pattern alignment.
7.3. Digital to Analog Converter Characterisation
The performance of the DACs is crucial to EPD performance and was assessed
using sawtooth waveforms in which each output level was held for four samples, as
shown in Figure 83 for the Vreal DAC. Due to the AC coupling of the multiplexer
inputs, static testing of the DAC output levels could not be performed. The 16 DAC
output levels can be clearly observed.
Hysteresis
on the level
8 output
Switching
transcient
Figure 83: Sawtooth waveforms from the Vreal DAC using 100 ms persistence time.
To assess the DAC performance, 500 sawtooth waveforms for each DAC were
captured on a 40 GSa/s digital sampling oscilloscope and analysed to find the non-
152
linearity and noise. In Figure 84, the mean signal level in the centre of each step of
the sawtooth is plotted along with a linear line of best fit. From this, information on
integral non-linearity (INL) and differential non-linearity (DNL) can be extracted as
shown in Figure 85. INL is the variation of each level from the best fit line through
all levels whereas DNL is the difference between each adjacent level and the ideal
step size. It can be observed that the maximum values of INL and DNL are less than
±0.25 as a proportion of the least significant bit (LSB) for both DACs. For
comparison, published data for a 22 GSa/s, 6-bit amplitude resolution DAC designed
for EPD showed maximum INL of 0.9 LSB and maximum DNL of 0.5 LSB [Schvan
2005].
16
15 Measured Average Level
Average Actual Level, normalised
14 Best Linear Fit

13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
-1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
DAC Output Level
Figure 84: Normalised DAC output voltage for the 16 input levels using the Vreal DAC.
The noise (Figure 86) showed little dependency on DAC output having a
standard deviation of 0.13 ± 0.01 LSB across all output levels for both DACs.
Therefore, the total uncertainty in the DAC output due to noise and non-linearity
is much less than the LSB. However, as shown in Figure 83, the DACs also suffer
from other dynamic imperfections such as switching transients, hysteresis and droop.
153
These effects will have some impact on EPD performance which is difficult to
quantify and therefore must be assessed from transmission results (see section 7.5.2).
1
0.8 Real DAC
0.6 Imag DAC

Integral Non-Linearity
(Proportion of LSB)
0.4
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
-1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
DAC Output Level
(a)
1
Real DAC
0.8
Imag DAC
Differential Non-linearity
0.6
(Proportion of LSB)
0.4
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
-1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
DAC Output Level
(b)
Figure 85: Non-linearity performance of the DACs showing (a) Integral non-linearity and (b)
differential non-linearity.
154
0.5
Real DAC
0.45
Imag DAC
Noise Standard Deviation

0.4
(Proportion of LSB)
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
DAC Output Level
Figure 86: Noise performance of the DACs.
7.4. FPGA Design
The Xilinx Virtex-4 4VFX100 device was selected, having 20 serial transceivers
with up to 6.2 Gb/s bit rate and 6Mb of block RAM as well as being one of the largest
Virtex-4 devices in terms of quantity of programmable logic cells. The Xilinx ISE
(version 8.2) package was used for implementation of the FPGA design, including
synthesis, mapping the design to FPGA circuit blocks and the place and route
operation. The VHDL hardware description language was used for circuit
specification.
A block diagram of the main functions implemented on each FPGA is shown in
Figure 87. Both FPGAs had identical functions except for the pattern synchronisation
circuit: the Vreal FPGA outputted a pulse at the start of each pattern cycle while the
Vimag FPGA detected this pulse and reset its counter to ensure pattern alignment. All
the main functions on the FPGAs used the 167.2 MHz clock. The pattern memory
outputted 64-bits of the sequence each clock cycle to the DSP. The DSP consisted of
128 parallel 55-tap FIR filters (using identical tap weights) the outputs of which are
scaled to 4-bit resolution. Hence, in each clock cycle, the DSP outputted 128 (64 bits
x 2 Sa/b) 4-bit words each representing a DAC sample. These were re-ordered into
155
sixteen 32-bit words, appropriately delayed for alignment purposes, and outputted by
the FPGA’s transceivers at 5.35 Gb/s. The FIR filter tap weights could be updated
during operation.
Pattern Tap Weight 167.2 MHz Manual Delay

Synch. Pulse Update Clock Control
55 32
Pattern FIR0 Scale MGT0
Synch.
55 32
Control MGT1
FIR1 Scale
5.35 Gb/s Output Data

FIR Input Register
55 32
FIR2 Scale MGT2
Counter 128 x 4 16 x 32
Reorder Delay
64
Pattern
Memory
DSP
Block
55 32
FIR127 Scale MGT15
Figure 87: Main functions and data flow in each FPGA.
Figure 88 shows the detail of a single 55-tap FIR filter with output scaling. It
was shown in section 6.1.2 that in the specific case of EPD (in which the FIR inputs
words are 1-bit), implementation of FIR filters in the time domain exploiting the
symmetry of the chromatic dispersion impulse response gives optimum efficiency
and hence this filter structure was used. The initial 1-bit adders and the multipliers
were implemented as multiplexers on the FPGA. The inputs to the filter were 55 1-
bit words consisting of the bit sequence sampled at 2 Sa/b, denoted by d(0…54) in
Figure 88. The 4-bit FIR filter tap weights, denoted c(0…27), represent one half of
the symmetrical chromatic dispersion impulse response.
The final sum output of each 55-tap FIR was a 10-bit word18 which was scaled to
4-bits for DAC output. In the simulations of chapter 5, the FIR outputs for a 29
DeBruijn sequence were calculated and scaled to use the full scale of the DAC, in
other words ideal scaling. However, in the real world the input data will be random.
18
This is calculated as follows: each tap weight is 4-bits (3 bits and 1 sign bit). As the multipliers for
the FIR filters are simply 1 x 4-bit, the multiplier outputs are also 3-bit and 1 sign bit. The maximum
output range is therefore 55 x ±7 = ±385. This requires 9 bits plus a sign bit = 10 bits in total.
156
In the FPGA implementation each FIR output, yFIR, is scaled by carrying out the
following arithmetic:
y scaled = ( y FIR − b ) ⋅ a -(7.1)
where b is the smallest expected value of the FIR sum and a is chosen such that the
maximum expected value of yscaled is the binary number “1111111111111”. The 4-bit
DAC output was then taken to be the four most significant bits of yscaled. The values
of a and b must be chosen with care. One approach is to choose values based on the
maximum and minimum possible outputs of the filter. However, these extreme
values are very unlikely outputs in a large filter. In this case, most output values will
fall within a narrow range, the effective resolution of the DAC is reduced and poor
performance is likely to be obtained. However, if too narrow a range is used, the FIR
output will occasionally overflow the 4-bit range used as output leading to occasional
systematic errors in the output waveform. This issue of FIR scaling is well known in
DSP theory, for example see [Proakis 1996]. In this work, the maximum and
minimum values of the FIR filter output were calculated using a 29 DeBruijn
sequence. An 8% margin was allowed before the values of a and b were calculated.
The effect of this is to slightly reduce the effective resolution of the DAC.
c(0)
2 5 Register Register
d(0)
d(54)
+ x (14 values) (3 values)
c(1) +
2 5 FIR Scaling
d(1) x
+ +
d(53)
c(2)
2 5 b a
d(2) + x
d(52) 10 Register 8 Register
(1 value) (1 value)
c(3) + -
10 10 18
d(3)
2 5
+ + 10
x
Truncate 4
x + +
+ to 4-bit
d(51)
yFIR yscaled
c(26)
2 5
d(26) x +
+
d(28)
c(27) +
4
d(27) x
clock
Figure 88: Implementation of a single FIR filter and scaling operation. d(0..54) are the 1-bit
input samples, c(0…27) are the tap weights, a is the scaling factor and b is the scaling offset.
157
To achieve the required clock rate, the FIR and scaling operations were
pipelined19, with signals taking four clock cycles to pass from the FIR input register
to the delay circuit input. The design used 71% of the programmable logic slices on
each FPGA (of which 66 % was for the FIR filter) and only 6% of the RAM on each
FPGA. The maximum delay in a single clock cycle due to logic and signal routing
delays, jitter and clock skew was 5.5 ns giving a maximum clock rate of 181.8 MHz,
comfortably above the 167.2 MHz clock rate required for 10.7 Gb/s operation.
7.5. Transmission Experiments
7.5.1. Method for the Transmission Experiments

Transmission experiments were carried out using a recirculating loop as shown
in Figure 89. The loop contained 80 km of SSMF (with no DCF) and an optical
amplifier with gain exactly equal to the fibre loss. The loop-synchronised
polarisation controller (LSPC) was used to make the results more consistent and
repeatable. Without the LSPC, any polarisation sensitive components in the optical
path would give a polarisation dependent loss penalty dependent on the launch
polarisation. At the receiver, noise loading was used to control the final optical signal
to noise ratio (OSNR). A bandpass optical filter of 0.4 nm FWHM was used to
remove out-of-band optical noise before the avalanche photodiode (APD) detector. A
receiver with clock and data recovery together with a bit error rate test set (BERT)
was used to obtain real time BER. However, unreliable locking of the clock recovery,
both with phase locked loop and high-Q filter based circuits, caused a reduction in
receiver sensitivity and synchronisation loss for the occasional recirculation. This is a
general problem when using EPD signals in a recirculating loop as the clock recovery
circuit only receives the expected signal in the final recirculation and must lock
quickly to avoid timing errors. This issue prevented the capture of eye diagrams on
an analog sampling scope. Instead, 1000 bits were captured on a 40 GSa/s digital
19
Pipelining is the process of splitting an algorithm so that it is performed over multiple clock cycles,
see for example [Parhi 1999]. This increases throughput at the expense of increasing the delay time.
158
sampling scope followed by off-line processing to retime the data and generate an eye
diagram.
The transmitter FIR filter tap weights for the transmission distances 400, 800 and
1200 km were calculated as described in section 6.2.2 with the impulse response
truncated using equation 6.7. Hence 19, 37 and 55 taps respectively were used for
400, 800 and 1200 km. For 400 and 800 km, the unused FPGA taps were set to zero.
EDFA
TX AOM
EPD Tx ATT
3nm LOOP AOM
LSPC 80km 10/90

SMF
ATT
ASE ATT
Source
Clock 3dB
Recovery EDFA
BERT ATT
PD 0.4nm
Figure 89: Transmission experiment arrangement
7.5.2. Transmission Performance

Figure 90 shows BER against OSNR (measured in a 0.1 nm bandwidth) plots for
back-back, 400 km (5 spans), 800 km (10 spans) and 1200 km (15 spans) using –5
dBm launch power and a 27 DeBruijn sequence length. The back-to-back case used
159
the Vreal FPGA with the FIR filters bypassed and the Vimag drive amplifier switched
off with its output bias set to a null point. The required OSNR penalties for 10-3 BER
were 1.4, 1.4 and 2.5 dB respectively for 400 km, 800 km and 1200 km. The small
variation in the slope of the curves (particularly evident in the 400 and 800 km results)
can be explained by the non-optimum filter design method, discussed in section 6.2.2.
Using longer pattern lengths the performance is reduced. For a 29 DeBruijn
sequence, the penalties are increased to 1.7, 1.7 and 2.8 dB respectively for 400, 800
and 1200 km at 10-3. Figure 91 shows the degradation in performance at 1200 km
transmission distance as the pattern length is increased from 27 to 211. The penalties
were 2.5, 2.8 and 4.0 dB respectively for 27, 29 and 211 DeBruijn sequences. For
17
longer patterns (2 ) error floors have been measured. This is believed to be due to
the issues of clock recovery and multiplexer input AC coupling. The back-to-back
results were not pattern length dependent.
-2
-3
-4 1200 km
-5
log(BER)
-6 Back-to-Back
-7
-8
800 km
-9 400 km
-10
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
OSNR, dB
Figure 90: BER against OSNR plots for back-to-back, 400 km, 800 km and 1200 km
transmission distances.
160
-2
-3
-4
211
log(BER)
-5
29
Back-to-Back
27
-6
-7
-8
-9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
OSNR, dB
Figure 91: BER against OSNR plots showing pattern dependency after 1200 km transmission. 27,
29 and 211 DeBruijn sequences are used.
Figure 6 shows eye diagrams for back-to-back, 400 km and 800 km taken by
capturing data on the 40 GSa/s scope. In all cases, the eyes were taken with noise
loading off and show 1000 bits. The measured OSNRs were 20.3 dB at 400 km and
19.5 dB at 800 km.
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 92: Eye diagrams for (a) back-to-back (b) 400 km and (c) 800 km.
The simulation method of section 6.2 was used to assess the source of the
penalties. The FIR scaling technique, described in section 7.4 was added to the
simulation. Then all simulation parameters were set to values equivalent to those
using in the FPGA-based transmitter (i.e. 2 Sa/b, 4-bit DAC, 4-bit quantisation of the
161
FIR tap weights and truncation of the chromatic dispersion impulse response given by
equation 6.7). At 10-3 BER the penalties predicted by the simulation were of 0.9, 0.9
and 0.6 dB respectively for 400, 800 and 1200 km. Therefore the excess penalties
due to DAC imperfections and clock recovery were 0.5, 0.5 and 1.9 d B respectively.
7.6. Potential Improvements to the Transmitter
A 10.7 Gb/s electronic predistortion (EPD) transmitter employing real time 2

Sa/b DSP implemented on FPGAs has been described. This section considers the
potential for improving the transmitter performance including reduction of
transmission penalties, increasing the DAC resolution, transmission distance and bit
rate.
Transmission over 400, 800 and 1200 km of standard SMF was achieved with
OSNR penalties of 1.4, 1.4 and 2.5 dB compared with back-to-back operation
respectively using short sequences for a BER of 10-3. The penalties were increased
for longer transmitted bit sequences.
The penalties for 400 and 800 km could have been reduced without any changes
to the hardware or FPGA design by using a greater number of non-zero taps. The
results in section 7.5.2 used a number of non-zero FIR taps given by equation 6.7, but
as shown in section 6.2, this is not optimum. Simulation using the FPGA transmitter
parameters including FIR output scaling show that the penalties could be improved
by 0.2 and 0.3 dB respectively for 400 and 800 km by the use of 5.3 non-zero taps per
100 km. The result at 1200 km could not have been improved without changing the
design as in this case equation 5.10 gives 55 taps, the number implemented on the
FPGA.
The excess penalties which could not be explained using simulation and the
pattern sensitivity are believed to be due to a combination of clock recovery issues
and imperfections in the DACs which were constructed from discrete components.
The clock recovery issues could be addressed either by further work to optimise
clock recovery for recirculating loop operation with EPD signals or by performing
experiments using a straight line link in which the clock recovery would receive a
constant signal and hence would remain locked at all times.
162
The DAC imperfections fall into several categories. Firstly, replacing the
multiplexers with devices with DC coupled inputs would remove the problem of
errors in long run lengths in individual FPGA sub-channels thereby removing error
floors when transmitting long sequences. This may also reduce general pattern
sensitivity. In section 7.3 it was shown that the combination of DAC non-linearity
and noise was much less than the LSB. The non-linearity could be reduced still
further by controlling the power supply voltage of each multiplexer separately to fine
tune the output levels. However, the DACs also suffer from other dynamic
imperfections such as switching transients, droop and hysteresis which are difficult to
eliminate using the current design. For the discrete component DACs used in this
work, it is the multiplexer output stages which determine the noise, linearity and
transient response of the overall DAC. The FPGA outputs are retimed and
thresholded within the multiplexer and so their signal quality does not have a
significant effect on the overall performance. The multiplexers were designed for
digital operation rather than for the generation of accurate analog waveforms as
required in this application. Overall performance would be improved by replacing
the current discrete component DACs with integrated circuit devices designed for
good analog output performance.
A four bit DAC was implemented in this work, but this could be increased using
the same basic technique. The largest current FPGAs have 24 high speed transceivers
allowing a 6-bit DAC to be implemented. The logic resource use of the FIR filters
would not be increased as the additional bits of precision are already available at the
scaler output and can be truncatated to 6 bits (rather than 4 bits). Whether this
increase in resolution improves overall transmission performance depends on the
extent to which the DAC response can be improved as discussed above.
Although the clock recovery and DAC issues described above will affect the
maximum transmission distance, the primary factor is the number of FIR filter taps
available. It has been shown in this work that large FIR filters for transmitter-based
chromatic dispersion compensation can be efficiently implemented on FPGAs as the
input words are only 1-bit. In this work 55-tap FIR filters were implemented on each
FPGA using 71 % of the available programmable logic resources of which 5% was
163
for functions other than DSP. As the resources required to implement FIR filters
scales linearly with the number of taps, this suggests that using all the available logic
resources would allow 1720 km SSMF, although as 100 % resource use is
approached on-chip routing delays may prevent 10.7 Gb/s operation. Beyond this
there are several options for increasing the transmission distances by increasing DSP
resources:
1. Add additional FPGAs. The design described in this chapter used two FPGAs,
one for the real and one for the imaginary part of the optical field. This is
efficient as the processing for each can be carried out independently. However, it
is difficult to envisage how a single FIR filter can be constructed on two FPGAs
without duplicating much of the logic. Therefore, this approach leads to rapidly
diminishing returns;
2. The available RAM on the FPGAs could be used to add LUTs to provide
additional chromatic dispersion compensation and/or SPM compensation. This
approach is limited by the exponential increase in memory requirements with
increasing chromatic dispersion as discussed in section 6.1.1. The V4FX100
FPGA used in this work has 6.2 Mbits of on-chip RAM which can be accessed in
a single clock cycle (the use of off-chip RAM in a real time application such as
this is impractical). As shown in [Watts 2007 B], this can provide an additional
650 km transmission distance over SSMF;
3. Use the latest available FPGA. Each new generation of FPGA uses a more
advanced CMOS process and hence benefits from increased density, providing
more logic cells per device. For example, using the currently available Virtex-5
5VFX200T device (which uses 65 nm CMOS and has 24 transceivers operating at
up to 6.5 Gb/s) the number of logic cells is 196,608 compared with 94,900 for the
Virtex-4 device (90 nm CMOS) used in this work, an increase of 207%. Further
design work would be required to determine the number of FIR taps possible with
this device but, as a conservative estimate, over 100 taps or transmission distances
of over 2100 km are likely to be possible. The rapid increase in the number of
logic cells available in each new generation of FPGA is likely to continue for the
foreseeable future allowing for the demonstration of increasingly complex DSP;
164
4. Use of alternative modulation formats with higher dispersion tolerance, for

example duobinary. In section 6.3, it was shown by simulation that EPD using
duobinary allows an increase of 50 % in the transmission distance for a given
processor memory (or number of FIR taps) compared with NRZ-OOK.
Another future requirement could be the demonstration of EPD at an increased
bit rate. One technique which would not require any change to the existing hardware
would be to use an alternative modulation format. For example QPSK or 1 Sa/b
duobinary (as discussed in section 6.3) would both enable an increase in the bit rate
by a factor of two. Increasing the bit rate by increasing the sample rate is also
possible using the techniques described in this chapter. Either an increase in the
FPGA output bit rate or additional external multiplexing would be required. In both
cases, available FPGA technology limits what can be achieved as the current
maximum bit rate is around 6.5 Gb/s and the maximum number of high speed
transceivers is 24. However, future FPGAs will feature increased numbers of faster
transceivers. One issue with increasing bit rate without using a higher order
modulation format is that the effect of chromatic dispersion and hence the required
processor memory increases as the bit rate squared. NRZ-OOK operation at 40 Gb/s
will therefore require 16 times as many FIR taps for a given transmission distance.
165
8. Conclusions and Recommendations for
Further Work
In this final chapter, the significance of the results presented in the thesis are
discussed and areas for further research are identified. Firstly, the original
contributions to the published knowledge offered in this thesis are summarised in
section 8.1. The overall aim of the thesis work was to investigate the maximum
transmission distance achievable using only electronic processing while introducing
the minimum complexity into the optical domain. The conclusions on this question
and the implications for practical long-haul optical systems are discussed in section
8.2. The thesis has focussed on the electronic predistortion (EPD) technique, but as
outlined in chapter 3, there are other electronic techniques which are capable of long-
haul operation. These are compared with EPD in the light of the thesis results. The
main experimental contribution of the thesis has been the construction of an FPGA-
based EPD transmitter. Such transmitters and similar receiver based processors could
have a major impact on the development of optical communications, both as an
experimental tool and in commercial products. The implications are discussed in
section 8.3. Finally, areas for further research which have been identified as a result
of the thesis work are proposed in section 8.4.
8.1. Summary of the Original Contributions in this

Thesis
Initially, simple equalisers were considered as a way of extending the reach of

conventional intensity modulated direct detection (IM/DD) systems without adding
optical components. The feed-forward equaliser (FFE) having a linear filter response
and the non-linear decision feedback equaliser (DFE) were investigated. It was
shown using numerical simulations that the 10.0 Gb/s transmission distance for a 2
dB OSNR penalty could be increased from 70 km to 112 km of SSMF using a 5-tap
FFE and 1-tap DFE, an improvement partly due to optimisation of the receiver
bandwidth [Watts 2005 A]. Experimental transmission using an integrated circuit
equaliser was achieved over 140 km SSMF, a distance at which uncompensated
166
Chapter 8– Conclusions and Recommendations
transmission was impossible. These results demonstrate that equalisers of this type
can be useful in extending the reach of metropolitan optical links or increasing the
dispersion tolerance of long-haul systems. However, long-haul transmission using
IM/DD systems with only electronic equalisers was shown to be not possible due to
the fact that the phase information on the optical field is not transferred into the
electronic domain after direct detection.
The techniques which overcome this limitation were reviewed. As part of this
process it was shown that SSB transmission combined with an FFE in the receiver
allows transmission over 720 km of SSMF [Watts 2005 B]. The transmission
distances possible with this technique are ultimately limited by low extinction ratios
and distortion caused by the SSB signal interacting with chromatic dispersion (which
the FFE can not fully compensate for). EPD was selected as a suitable candidate for
further investigation as long-haul transmission was possible with low penalty and
only a modest increase in optical complexity.
Firstly, using numerical simulation, the fundamental transmission properties of
EPD signals were investigated. It was shown that single channel NRZ-OOK EPD
transmission over 6400 km SSMF was possible using 80 km span lengths. Due to a
combination of higher back-to-back required OSNR and lower non-linear threshold,
EPD transmission using duobinary was restricted to 5200 km. Penalties due to cross
phase modulation were investigated in 50 GHz spaced NRZ-OOK DWDM
transmission with worst case polarisation alignment. It was shown that, when
operating at the optimum launch power, the penalties due to XPM are relatively
constant. The large variation and extreme penalties described in [Essiambre 2006]
were only observed at launch powers significantly above the optimum. A maximum
transmission distance of 6000 km was found for 50 GHz spaced DWDM operation.
It was further shown that, despite the effect of XPM, applying SPM compensation in
DWDM systems allows increased launch powers and hence greater transmission
distance or OSNR margin. After 5600 km, applying SPM compensation increased
the optimum launch power from -7 dBm to -4 dBm. Again, the variation in required
OSNR due to XPM was modest (with a maximum penalty of 1.5 dB compared with
back-to-back) when operating at the optimum launch power.
167
Secondly, the effect of EPD implementation on transmission performance was

investigated. It was shown that the duobinary modulation format does have some
implementation advantages for EPD systems. Using 2 Sa/b duobinary increased the
transmission distance per processor memory bit by 50%. Using 1 Sa/b duobinary,
thereby reducing the DSP complexity and speed, permitted the same distance per
processor memory bit as 2 Sa/b NRZ-OOK with less than 2 dB OSNR penalty [Watts
2007 A]. Various DSP structures were considered for compensating chromatic
dispersion and time domain FIR filters which exploit the symmetry of the impulse
response were found to be the most efficient in use of digital resources.
Long-haul transmission simulations were repeated using realistic DSP and DAC
parameters. Using a 2 Sa/b 5-bit DAC, FIR filters with 5.3 taps per 100 km and tap
weight resolution of 5-bits, no mean OSNR penalty was found for transmission
distances of between 400 and 5600 km.
Finally a 10.7 Gb/s reprogrammable FPGA-based EPD transmitter was described
[Watts 2007 B]. The transmitter allows the demonstration and investigation of real-
time DSP by reprogramming the FPGAs. Using 55-tap FIR filters, NRZ-OOK EPD
transmission over up to 1200 km was demonstrated with penalties of less than 2.5 dB
with respect to back-to-back [Watts 2008].
8.2. Electronic Predistortion – Conclusions on Long-

Haul Operation and Comparison with other Electronic
Techniques
The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the maximum transmission
distance over SSMF achievable using only electronic compensation of chromatic
dispersion. The maximum requirement for terrestrial links is of the order of 4000 km
(e.g. Minneapolis to Seattle) [Zyskind 2002] while submarine links range up to 10000
km (the width of the Pacific Ocean) [Rasmussen 2001]. In this thesis, a value of
6000 km was determined for the maximum transmission distance (at which the
OSNR margin falls to zero) of 10.7 Gb/s DWDM EPD signals using the NRZ-OOK
format with 50 GHz spacing and worst case polarisation alignment. However, this
study used lumped amplification and an arbitrary choice of span length (80km). In
168
practice there are many methods of increasing transmission distance and achieving
practical OSNR margins to meet the needs of the longest terrestrial or submarine
systems. Firstly consider ways of reducing optical noise: span lengths can be reduced
to 40-60 km in line with current submarine systems or amplifiers with improved noise
figures or distributed Raman amplification can be employed. Another option is the
use of a modulation format with improved back-to-back required OSNR, such as
DPSK, although this has not been considered in the thesis as it introduces greater
receiver complexity. Alternatively, the nonlinear threshold launch power can be
increased by co-polarising adjacent wavelength channels or applying SPM
compensation as demonstrated in this thesis. However, the implementation of real-
time SPM compensation is challenging (see section 8.4.2). From the above, it seems
that 10.7 Gb/s EPD is capable of operating over the maximum required transmission
distances without the use of special fibres (i.e. NZ-DSF) or advanced modulation
formats.
A comparison of EPD with optically compensated dispersion mapped systems
has not been attempted. In practice, direct comparisons are difficult as the
transmission records reported for dispersion mapped systems use a combination of
fibres (NZ-DSF with positive and negative dispersion, DCF and SSMF), advanced
modulation formats and often Raman amplification [Charlet 2004], [Rasmussen
2003]. NZ-DSF with ±2-4 ps/nm.km are used in order to suppress XPM and FWM
(by ensuring that there is “walk off” between neighbouring channels) and increase
dispersion tolerance to accommodate many wavelengths within the map. In addition,
dispersion mapped systems with many wavelengths are only possible with newer
installed fibres designed for reduced dispersion slope. In the case of EPD, chromatic
dispersion compensation is performed for each channel independently and adaptively.
Therefore, dispersion tolerance and dispersion slope are not important parameters for
EPD systems. The ability to design and rapidly install a DWDM system of many
wavelengths over any fibre is an important advantage of EPD over dispersion mapped
systems. On the other hand, all recent transmission records for dispersion mapped
systems have been achieved using 40 Gb/s per channel usually with 50 GHz spacing,
leading to higher overall capacity and reduced component counts compared with a 10
169
Gb/s per channel DWDM EPD system. Section 8.4.3 discusses techniques for
achieving 40 Gb/s per wavelength using EPD.
As discussed in chapter 4, there are two other competing electronic techniques
which allow long-haul operation: the phase and polarisation diversity coherent
receiver and SSB-OFDM.
The coherent receiver when used with QPSK and polarisation multiplexing has
two main advantages over EPD: Firstly, 40 Gb/s operation has already been
experimentally demonstrated [Savory 2007 B] allowing higher capacity and
bandwidth efficient DWDM operation. Secondly, high quality compensation for
PMD is provided as part of the polarisation diversity reception process, an important
consideration when operating over older installed fibres. As compensation is
performed only at the receiver on broadband signals, the peak-to-mean ratios should
be the same as for EPD (but with the highest values at the receiver rather than the
transmitter). Therefore it would be expected that the maximum transmission
distances achievable using the coherent receiver would be similar to EPD. In fact the
maximum single channel 10.7 GBaud transmission distance reported in [Savory 2007
B] of 6400 km over SSMF with 80 km spans compares very well with the simulation
results reported in chapter 5 for EPD. The main advantage of EPD over the coherent
receiver, particularly when using NRZ-OOK or duobinary modulation formats, is that
the only required change to the optical domain is a slightly more complex MZM. The
commercial viability of the coherent receiver depends on finding efficient and low
cost integrated manufacturing solutions for the local oscillator, polarisation splitting,
hybrid and photodiode components.
The SSB-OFDM technique, like EPD, adds very little complexity to the optical
domain: a more complex MZM or the addition of an optical sideband filter. Although
it does have the disadvantage that complex DSP is required in both transmitter and
receiver. As the data is carried in many subcarriers, rather than as a broadband signal,
fibre nonlinearities have a different affect on SSB-OFDM compared to EPD and
coherent systems. However, SSB-OFDM signals, in common with the other
electronic compensation schemes, have high peak-to-mean ratio. In [Lowery 2007] a
maximum DWDM transmission distance of 4000 km SSMF (using 80 km spans) was
170
found for 10 Gb/s SSB-OFDM signals, limited by SPM and FWM. However, the
channel spacing assumed was 15 GHz, allowing greater total capacity than the
DWDM EPD systems studied in this thesis.
8.3. FPGA-based Transmitters and Receivers for

Optical Communications
The work in chapter 7 demonstrated that the latest FPGAs (together with suitable
external multiplexing components) are capable of performing complex DSP for 10
GBaud communications. Whether or not EPD becomes the technique of choice for
future optical communications systems, FPGA-based transmitters could become a
standard feature of university and corporate laboratories. The system described is a
fully programmable optical transmitter capable of producing arbitrary fields (in a
single polarisation). Interest in advanced modulation formats is growing [Winzer
2006] and by reprogramming the FPGAs and adjusting the MZM biases many
modulation formats can be generated including OFDM. In addition, the FPGAs can
perform coding [Song 2008], now a standard feature of optical transmission products,
and pulse shaping. The transmitter can therefore be used to rapidly compare various
modulation formats and coding schemes for a given fibre link. Such comparisons are
likely to be very accurate as the same hardware is used in all cases. The largely
digital nature of the FPGA-based transmitter offers the advantages of greater
repeatability and higher tolerance to manufacturing and temperature variations than a
system constructed from analog microwave electronics.
FPGAs can also be used to investigate real-time DSP for receiver based
compensation schemes such as the digital coherent receiver described in chapter 4 as
well as SSB-OFDM receivers. In these cases an ADC would be required, interfacing
to the receivers of the FPGA high speed transceivers. In [Leven 2008] FPGA
processing was described for a 2.5GBaud polarisation multiplexed QPSK coherent
receiver. The use of polarisation multiplexing and the QPSK format gave 10 Gb/s
transmission in total. Four 2.5 GSa/s ADCs were interfaced to the FPGA to capture
the four outputs of the optical hybrid. The FPGA was used for polarisation tracking,
frequency and phase estimation which can be achieved using 1 Sa/b capture and
171
processing. If compensation for transmission impairments such as chromatic

dispersion had been included, a sample rate of 5 GSa/s (2 Sa/b) would have been
required for optimum performance. However, one drawback of using FPGA (or
indeed any DSP) at the receiver is that the DSP input consists of multiple bit words
from the ADC. Implementing FIR filters with multiple bit inputs (rather than the 1-
bit input used in the EPD work) will consume much greater FPGA resources per tap.
As discussed in chapter 6, frequency domain FIR implementations may be beneficial
for compensating large amounts of chromatic dispersion in this case.
Both transmitter and receiver applications will benefit from the rapidly growing
number of logic cells and other processing features available in each new generation
of FPGAs, allowing the demonstration of increasingly complex DSP. Future FPGAs
will also contain a greater number of faster transceivers for off-chip communications.
This will facilitate increased sample rates for optical transmitters and receivers. High
speed external ADC/DAC are also likely to be available in the near future: the latest
real-time sampling scopes have sample rates up to 50 GSa/s (although, to date, the
integrated circuits have not been offered for use in other applications by the
manufacturers).
FPGAs have been widely used in optical communications products, but usually
for low speed control applications. This works shows that FPGAs are now capable of
performing DSP at optical line rates, opening up new applications for FPGAs in
optical products. It is likely that custom application specific integrated circuits (ASIC)
will still be used in high volume applications which require minimum power
consumption and chip size. FPGA solutions will be viable for lower volumes due to
the lower development costs and will have the advantage of being reprogrammable in
the field leading to greater flexibility.
8.4. Recommendations for Further Work
8.4.1. Determination of Upper Bound for XPM penalty

In chapter 5, the impact of XPM in 50 GHz spaced co-polarised DWDM
transmission was investigated. The variation in OSNR penalty with data in adjacent
172
channels was found by carrying out 50 trials with different random time delays
between the EPD channels. While the smooth curves and consistent results give
some confidence, this approach is unlikely to give the upper bound on the XPM
penalty. Another disadvantage of the method is that simulation times are extremely
long. Given how important this issue is in engineering a practical EPD system,
further work is required to determine the upper bounds on the XPM for a given
launch power and channel spacing. Ideally this would use an analytical technique, to
enable rapid results, rather than the numerical approach used in the work in this thesis.
The investigation should also take account of the effect of bit rate. In [Weber
2008] it was shown that the non-linear threshold launch power is higher for 40 Gb/s
than for 10 Gb/s. Although no other bit rates were considered so that a general trend
could be observed, it appears that SPM and XPM have less impact on performance as
bit rates are increased.
It was shown in Chapter 4 that when operating at the optimum launch power,
there was only a modest variation in XPM penalty due to data in neighboring
channels. However, practical systems must cope with transient power variations, for
example due to switching individual wavelengths on and off. Further work may
consider the probability of XPM induced errors due to these momentary power
variations.
8.4.2. Non-linearity Compensation for EPD

SPM compensation has been shown in this thesis to be beneficial for DWDM
EPD systems. It has been further shown that XPM limits the launch powers (and
hence maximum transmission distance and OSNR margin) in an SPM compensated
EPD system. However, XPM can also be compensated provided that the data in all
wavelength channels is known to the processor. XPM compensation opens up the
possibility of increasing bandwidth efficiency by reducing the channel spacing.
The implementation of real time processing for non-linearity compensation is
challenging due to the high real-time computational load required. Two approaches
that have been proposed are the use of look-up tables (LUT) [Killey 2006] and
solving the non-linear Schrödinger equation in real time [Li 2008].
173
Figure 93: Proposed SPM and chromatic dispersion compensation using the LUT approach,
from [Killey 2006].
Figure 94: OSNR penalty against LUT address size for 10 Gb/s 1200 km SSMF transmission
with SPM compensation, from [Killey 2006].
Using the LUT approach, one possible method for SPM compensation (which
could also be applied to XPM compensation) in EPD is shown in Figure 93 [Killey
2006]. The LUT entries are calculated by back-propagation using off-line processing
for the target launch powers and transmission distance as described in chapter 5. The
M fibre
size of the LUTs for full SPM compensation scale as 2 . This is identical to the
case in which LUTs are used for chromatic dispersion compensation and, as shown in
section 6.1.1, the memory sizes required for transmission distances of 2000 km SSMF
and above are quite unrealistic. However, it is possible to reduce the size of the LUT
at the expense of reduced launch power, as described in [Killey 2006]. The
maximum launch powers for a 2 dB penalty as a function of LUT address size using
174
this technique for 1200 km SSMF transmission are shown in Figure 94. In this case
the pulse spreading (as calculated by equation 2.11) is 27 bits. However, the use of
LUTs with 15 bit address lines still allows effective SPM compensation up to +3
dBm. The maximum launch powers when XPM compensation is added have not
been assessed.
The alternative approach of solving the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in real
time is also very computationally intensive although it does have the advantage of
scaling linearly with transmission distance [Li 2008]. In this paper real time
processing was proposed and simulated for ten 20 Gb/s DPSK signals spaced by 20
GHz transmitted over 800 km of dispersion shifted fibre (with D = 0 ps/nm.km and a
dispersion slope of 0.04 ps/km.nm2) using coherent reception. The use of dispersion
shifted fibre means that four-wave mixing is the main impairment compensated.
After 500 km, the Q-factor was increased from 5.5 to 7.5 and the optimum launch
power was increased by 2 dB using electronic compensation. The authors estimated
that the processing resources required to implement the scheme were an order of
magnitude higher than that available using the latest FPGAs.
21
20
Required OSNR (dB)
19
18
17
16
15
14
-8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6
Launch power (dBm)
Figure 95: Tolerance to launch power variations without SPM compensation (dotted line) and
when using SPM compensation for expected launch powers of 0 dBm (dashed line) and +3 dBm
(solid line) after 1200 km 10 Gb/s transmission, from [Killey 2005 B].
175
From the above, it can be observed that no nonlinearity compensation technique

has been proposed which scales to ultra-long haul transmission distances over SSMF
with currently available technology. In addition, although SPM compensation using
off-line calculation of EPD waveforms has been demonstrated [Roberts 2006], no
demonstration involving real-time processing, even at short distances, has been
published. Clearly innovative new approaches are required to simplify real time SPM
compensation algorithms for ultra-long haul links.
Another issue of great practical importance when applying nonlinearity
compensation is that of launch power control and transient power variations. [Killey
2005 B] demonstrated that the tolerance to power variations when using SPM
compensation decreases with the launch power as shown in Figure 95. In addition to
this, as shown in chapter 5, penalties due to XPM (if not compensated) can be very
large if the launch power is above optimum. Therefore, the effect of transients and
the failure of the launch power control of individual spans should be thoroughly
investigated.
Other practical issues for XPM compensation require further investigation.
Applying XPM compensation using EPD at the transmitter requires the buffering and
coordinated transmission of large quantities of data across many wavelengths. This
in turn requires a major shift in the structure of telecommunications systems as in
today’s networks, the data transmitted on individual wavelengths is independent. An
additional issue which applies to XPM compensation either at the transmitter or
receiver is how to add or drop wavelengths at intermediate points along the link (as is
often performed in today’s optical networks). In this case the transmitter processor
does not have knowledge of all the data transmitted in the link. As the effect of XPM
is reduced with wavelength spacing, one solution to this (although it does reduce
bandwidth efficiency) is to use groups of XPM compensated wavelengths each
traveling over a given path in the network with guard bands between the wavelength
groups.
176
8.4.3. Higher Bit Rates for EPD Systems

Optical transmission systems using 40 Gb/s per wavelength are now being
deployed and 100 Gb/s systems are being researched. Higher line rates potentially
reduce the number of optical components required to transmit a given total bit rate
and are therefore economically attractive. Several options for increasing the bit rate
of EPD systems have already been discussed in this thesis. Firstly, without
significantly increasing the complexity or sample rate, modulation formats such as
QPSK or 1 Sa/b duobinary can double the bit rate. Duobinary using 1 Sa/b DSP is
particularly attractive from the view of reducing component numbers as it uses a
simple direct detection receiver. This is particularly true for relatively short links
(<2000 km) in which the OSNR margin is sufficient to cope with the additional
penalty caused by 1 Sa/b operation. 21.4 Gb/s duobinary transmission could be
demonstrated using the FPGA-based transmitter without any hardware changes.
ADCs and DACs with sample rates up to 50 GSa/s have been demonstrated for
test equipment and other specialised applications [Cheng 2004]. These may become
commercially available over the next few years, permitting EPD with higher sample
rates. The achievement of 80 GSa/s DACs will be a major milestone allowing low
penalty EPD at 40 GBaud. However, even for linear chromatic dispersion
compensation, required DSP resources scale as the Baud rate squared for a given
modulation format. Therefore implementing 40 GBaud EPD requires 16 times the
resources of a 10 GBaud system and achieving long-haul transmission distances at 40
GBaud using the FPGA-based transmitter becomes a significant challenge. However
with the continued rapid increase in the power of digital processing that can be
constructed on a single chip, there appears to be few barriers to 40 GBaud EPD using
custom ASICs. Clearly the Baud rate squared scaling rule makes the achievement of
SPM compensation at 40 GBaud another considerable challenge (see section 8.4.2
above).
Other possibilities for increasing total capacity without increasing sample rate
should also be investigated, for example, the use of polarisation multiplexing or very
closely spaced wavelengths with electronic XPM and FWM compensation. The
177
former would introduce additional optical complexity at both transmitter and receiver,
whereas, the later involves very challenging real-time processing.
8.4.4. Other EPD Investigations

There are several other details of EPD operation which deserve further attention.
Firstly, the calculation of tap weights for chromatic dispersion compensation FIR
filters described in chapter 6 was shown to suffer from a variation in required OSNR
depending on the transmission distance. However, no improved method has been
published. The nature of the chromatic dispersion impulse response makes this a
difficult problem. During this work, the application of window functions was
investigated without any significant improvement being obtained. The development
of a method for calculating tap weights which delivered consistent low penalty
performance while minimising the number of taps required would be useful. As
shown in chapter 6, the maximum gain in required OSNR would be of the order of
0.5 dB. However, in pushing EPD into the ultra-long haul regime in which OSNR
margins are small, this may be important.
Simulations in this thesis neglected the effect of finite laser linewidth.
Simulation results in [El Said 2005] showed that linewidths as low as a few MHz
(typical for the distributed feedback lasers used in telecommunications applications)
caused error floors in an 800 km duobinary EPD system. The effect of linewidth in
long haul EPD systems should be investigated using numerical simulation and
experiment.
Finally polarisation effects require further attention. This includes determining
the effect of PMD on EPD signals compared with dispersion managed systems;
determining the effect of XPM if adjacent wavelength channels are cross polarised
and whether polarisation multiplexing of EPD signals to increase bandwidth
efficiency is feasible.
8.4.5. Further Development of the FPGA-based Transmitter

Further work is required to try to eliminate the remaining transmission penalties
which can not be explained by simulation. The penalties found in chapter 6 are
178
believed to be due to clock recovery problems in recirculating loop operation and

imperfections in the DACs. The clock recovery issues should be addressed either by
optimisation of the clock recovery for recirculating loop operation or the construction
of a straight line link of fibre and amplifiers. When available at sufficiently high
sample rates, the current integrated circuit DACs should be replaced with integrated
circuit devices with proven good analog performance.
Several applications of the transmitter which could be investigated without
hardware changes have already been discussed. Reprogramming the FPGAs would
be necessary. Duobinary EPD should be investigated to confirm the simulation
results of section 6.3, including 10.7 Gb/s operation using 2 Sa/b DSP (to increase the
transmission distance per FIR filter tap) and 21.4 Gb/s using 1 Sa/b DSP (to
demonstrate increased bit rate). The transmitter could also be used to provide the first
real time demonstration of optical SSB-OFDM generation at 10 Gb/s (see section 4.3).
In particular, the scheme described in [Schmidt 2008] in which all transmitter
operations, including generation of the single sideband using a frequency domain
Hilbert transform, are performed digitally could be implemented without any changes
to the hardware.
179
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Appendix B: Mathematical Details of Simulation
Technique
B-1 Fibre Transmission Modelling: the Nonlinear Schrödinger

Equation
Propagation of a signal in nonlinear single-mode fibre can be described by the

nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE):
∂A ∂A i ∂2A α
+ β1 + β 2 2 + A = iγ A A
2
-(B.1)
∂z ∂t 2 ∂t 2
where A is the signal amplitude, β1 and β2 are the dispersion parameters (see section
2.1.2) and γ is the nonlinear parameter (see section 2.1.4). In practice this can be
solved using the symmetrised split-step Fourier method [Agrawal 1995], a finite
difference approach to solving differential equations. In this method, the length of
the fibre is split into discrete sections (or steps). Although in reality the dispersion
and nonlinearity of the fibre act together on the signal along the fibre length, if the
steps are chosen short enough, a good approximation can be found by applying them
separately. In this work (following [Forghieri 1997]), the length of the steps was
variable, dependent on the optical power and was chosen such that the non-linear
phase shift (given by equation 2.14), φ < 3 mrad over the step.
The signal was represented by an array of complex optical field points, denoted
by the Fourier transform pair, Et(t) ↔ Ef(f). There were five mathematical operations
per step:
1. In the frequency domain, half the chromatic dispersion of the step was applied
using the transfer function of equation 2.8;
2. The signal was transferred to the time domain using the fast Fourier transform
(FFT);
3. The nonlinearity and attenuation of the step was applied in the time domain using
the complex multiplication:
195
Appendix B - Mathematical Details of Simulations
′  z ⋅α 
Et (t ) = Et (t ) ⋅ exp  j ⋅ z eff ⋅ γ ⋅ P(t ) − -(B.2)
 2 
where z is the step length, α is the attenuation of the fibre in linear units, γ is the
nonlinear parameter of the fibre, P(t) is the instantaneous optical power =|Et(t)|2 and
zeff is the effective length for non-linear interaction in the presence of attenuation for
the step given by:
1 − exp (− αz )
z eff = -(B.3)
α
4. The inverse FFT was applied to return the signal to the frequency domain;
5. The remaining half of the chromatic dispersion of the step was applied using the
transfer function of equation 2.8. Splitting the chromatic dispersion in this way
leads to slightly more accurate results for a given step length [Agrawal 1995].
B-2 Semi-Analytical Estimation of BER
Using the semi-analytical BER estimation technique, noise probability

distributions are assumed based on known properties of optical noise after direct
detection and the BER is calculated analytically based on these distributions.
The fibre transmission simulation is performed without adding noise. In other
words all amplifiers are ideal gain blocks. At the receiver, the electrical current is
given by:
I (t ) = R ⋅ E t (t )
2
-(B.4)
where R is the detector responsivity and Et(t) is the received noise free electric field.
For optically amplified links the dominant noise sources are signal-ASE beat noise
and ASE-ASE beat noise. Other sources such as laser shot noise and receiver thermal
noise can be neglected. In [Agrawal 2002] an expression for the standard deviation
of signal-ASE noise is given. This can be modified to express it in terms of
measurable parameters:
2 R ⋅ I (t ) ⋅ Pav ⋅ B
σ Sig − ASE (t )2 = -(B.5)
OSNR ⋅ RBW
where Pav is the average received power, B is the receiver electrical bandwidth, OSNR
is the received signal to noise ratio and RBW is the resolution bandwidth of the OSNR
196
measurement. It can be observed that signal-ASE noise is dependent on the

instantaneous received current and hence for OOK signals, the ‘one’ level will have
higher more noise than the ‘zero’ level. The Signal-ASE beat noise was assumed to
have a Gaussian distribution, although in practice it is known to have a χ2 distribution
after detection. However, the Gaussian approximation is known to give very accurate
BER for OOK signals [Marcuse 1990].
On the other hand, ASE-ASE beat noise is not signal dependent and its standard
deviation is given by [Desurvire 1994]:
2
 B (2 Bopt − B )
 Pav 
σ ASE
2
− ASE =  -(B.6)
 OSNR ⋅ RBW 
where Bopt is the bandwidth of the optical filter before the detector. The total noise
standard deviation is then given by:
σ (t )2 = σ Sig − ASE (t )2 + σ ASE
2
− ASE -(B.7)
The signal and noise were sampled once per bit, then the BER was calculated as:
0.5 N  a j (x j − V DL )
BER = ∑ erfc 
2σ j
 -(B.8)
N j =1  
where xj are the voltage samples, σj are the noise samples, VDL is the decision level, N
is the total number of bits and aj are the transmitted bits represented as +1 for logical
one and -1 as logical zero.
For a given configuration, the best BER was found by sweeping the sampling
point and decision level, VDL.
B-3 The Monte-Carlo Technique
The receiver model used in the Monte-Carlo simulations of chapters 5 and 6 is

shown in Figure 96. White Gaussian distributed noise was added to the signal
directly before the optical filter in the receiver to model the accumulated ASE noise
of the EDFAs in the link. This is a reasonable assumption as the EDFA has a gain
bandwidth of approximately 30 nm, very much higher than the signal bandwidth. In
a real link, ASE noise is added to the signal at each EDFA. The simulation results
therefore neglect any effects in which the optical noise itself causes nonlinear
197
distortion of the signal. The simplification of adding noise only at the receiver is
used to speed up simulation times and because we are mainly interested in finding the
required OSNR for a given BER (rather than the BER of an actual link). For a given
OSNR (in dB), the total noise power (in Watts) is given by:
OSNR
− df
Pn = 10 10
⋅ Pav ⋅ -(B.9)
RBW
where df is the frequency resolution of the simulation. The noise is then added
equally to both polarisations of the received optical field:
′
Ef ( f ) = E f ( f ) + RWGN ( f ) 0.5Pn -(B.10)
where ERX and E’RX are the received optical fields in the frequency domain before and
after the addition of noise and RWGN is an array of random numbers with zero mean
and standard deviation of one.
The signal with added noise then passes through the optical band-pass filter,
photodiode (equation B.4) and electrical low-pass filter. Then a threshold is applied
to determine whether the bit is a one or zero. The resulting bit sequence is compared
with the transmitted sequence to determine the BER. The BER estimation makes no
assumptions about the final noise probability density functions.
Optical Electrical
Signal Adaptive Error
Input + Bandpass Bessel
Threshold Counting
Filter Filter
White
Gaussian
Noise
Figure 96: The Monte-Carlo receiver model.
The uncertainty in the Monte-Carlo method is assessed in [Jeruchim 1984]. To

obtain a BER estimate with a 99 % confidence level within a factor of ±1.3 of the
actual BER, requires 100 errors to be generated. For our target BER of 10-3, this
translates into a requirement to simulate 105 bits to obtain a BER estimate of between
7.6 x 10-4 and 1.3 x 10-3.
198
In this work, the required OSNR was found by taking several BER estimates at
different OSNRs and interpolating to find the required OSNR at 10-3 BER. One
consequence of this is that the uncertainty in required OSNR is dependent on the
slope of the BER against OSNR curve. It follows from this that the Monte-Carlo
uncertainty is higher as the signal is degraded (i.e. as the required OSNR is higher).
Figure 97 shows an example taken from the simulations of chapter 5 for single
channel transmission over 5600 km. By finding the OSNRs for the confidence level
BERs [upper 99 % confidence level log(3 x 10-3) = -2.89, lower 99 % confidence
level, log(7.6 x 10-4) = -3.12] the 99% confidence level for the required OSNR can be
found. This is ±0.2 dB for -8 dBm launch power (low penalty) but is higher, ±0.38
dB for -5.5 dB launch power (affected by SPM distortion).
-2
-2.2
-5.5 dBm
-2.4
-2.6 -8.0 dBm
log(BER)
-2.8
-3
-3.2
-3.4
-3.6
-3.8
-4
8 8.95 dB
9 9.35 dB
10 10.6 dB 11 11.35 dB 12 13
OSNR, dB
Figure 97: Uncertainty in required OSNR estimate due to Monte-Carlo after 5600 km single
channel transmission using -8 and -5.5 dBm.
This issue is problematic for DWDM analysis as it makes it difficult to

distinguish between spreading of the required OSNR values due to XPM and due to
Monte-Carlo. To ensure that the maximum and minimum values of required OSNR
shown in the DWDM simulations of section 5.3 were due to XPM, the simulations
199
were repeated for single channel transmission but with otherwise identical parameters.
The bar chart shown in Figure 50 is repeated in Figure 98 with the single channel
results added. It can be observed that the required OSNR variation due to Monte-
Carlo (single channel results) is much narrower than the spread of the 9-channel
results which include XPM for launch powers of -6 dBm and above. Table 6
summarises the 99 % confidence levels and the standard deviations of required OSNR
in the single channel simulations.
50
Occurances
40 -8.0 dBm
Number of
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
Occurances
40
Number of
-7.0 dBm
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
Occurances
40 -6.0 dBm
Number of
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
-5.5 dBm
Occurances
40
Number of
30
20
10
0
8.8 9.2 9.6 10 10.4 10.8 11.2 11.6 12 12.4 12.8 13.2 13.6 14
Required OSNR, dB
Figure 98: Bar charts of required OSNR for 50 trials of 5600 km transmission in single channel
(grey) and 9-channel (black) cases.
200
Table 6
Analysis of required OSNR errors due to Monte-Carlo uncertainty, back-to-back and
after 5600 km single channel transmission
Distance Launch Power 99% Confidence Standard

(dBm) Interval (dB) Deviation of 50
Trials (dB)
Back-to-back N/A ±0.17 0.05
5600 km -8 ±0.20 0.07
-7 ±0.22 0.09
-6 ±0.29 0.10
-5.5 ±0.38 0.12
201
Appendix C: List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
ADC Analog-to-digital converter
APD Avalanche photodiode
ASE Amplified spontaneous emission (noise)
ASIC Application specific integrated circuit
BER Bit error rate
BERT Bit error rate tester
BiCMOS Bipolar and CMOS integration process
CDR Clock and data recovery (circuit)
CFBG Chirped fibre Bragg grating
CML Chirp managed laser
CMOS Complementary logic using metal-oxide-semiconductor FET
(field effect transistor)
DAC Digital-to-analog converter
DCF Dispersion compensating fibre
DFE Decision feedback equaliser
DGD Differential group delay
DML Directly modulated laser
DNL Differential nonlinearity (of DAC)
DPSK Differential phase shift keying
DQPSK Differential quaternary phase shift keying
DSF Dispersion shifted fibre
DSP Digital signal processing
DWDM Dense wavelength division multiplexing
EDFA Erbium doped fibre amplifier
EPD Electronic predistortion
FEC Forward error correction
FFE Feed-forward equaliser
FFT Fast Fourier transform
202
Appendix C – Abbreviations and Acronyms
FIR Finite impulse response (filter)

FPGA Field programmable gate array
FWHM Full width at half maximum
FWM Four wave mixing
IFFT Inverse fast Fourier transmform
IIR Infinite impulse response (filter)
IM/DD Intensity modulation/direct detection
INL Integral nonlinearity (of DAC)
ISE Xilinx FPGA design software package
ISI Intersymbol interference
ITU International Telecommunications Union
LO Local oscillator
LSPC Loop-synchronous polarisation controller
LUT Look-up table
MATLAB Matrix laboratory – mathematical modeling software package
MLSE Maximum likelihood sequence estimation
MZM Mach-Zehnder modulator
NRZ Non-return-to-zero format
NZ-DSF Non-zero dispersion shifted fibre
OEO Optical to electrical to optical regenerator
OFDM Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
OOK On-off keying
OSNR Optical signal-to-noise ratio
PDF Probability density function
PDL Polarisation dependent loss
PMD Polarisation mode dispersion
QPSK Quaternary phase shift keying
RAM Random access memory
RZ Return-to-zero (format)
SBS Stimulated Brillouin scattering
SMF Single mode fibre
203
Appendix C – Abbreviations and Acronyms
SNR Signal-to-noise ratio

SPM Self phase modulation
SRS Stimulated Raman scattering
SSB Single sideband
SSB-OFDM Single sideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
SSMF Standard single mode fibre
VHDL VLSI (very large scale integration) hardware description
language
WDM Wavelength division multiplexing
XPM Cross phase modulation
204

Philip Watts Thesis Final

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Philip Watts Thesis Final

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LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

Chromatic Dispersion Compensation using

Philip Michael Watts

A thesis submitted to University College London for the degree of Doctor of

Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,

1. Aims and Overview of the Thesis .....................................................................18

Dispersion compensation and

SSMF SSMF SSMF

1.1. Scope of the Thesis

distance compared with an uncompensated system. Therefore some modification is

1.2. An Overview of the Thesis

by numerical simulations and experiments that the increase in maximum transmission

1.3. Original Contributions

The original contributions made during the thesis work are:

1.4. Publications Arising from the Thesis Work

R.I.Killey, P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, ‘Electronic dispersion

P.M. Watts, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, P. Bayvel, M. Glick, M. Lobel, B. Christensen,

P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘An FPGA-based Optical

P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, Y.Benlachtar, V.Mikhailov, P.Bayvel, and R.I.Killey,

P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Single sideband optical

R.I.Killey, P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, ‘Electronic dispersion

P.M.Watts, V.Mikhailov, S.Savory, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Electronic signal

P.M.Watts, V. Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Performance of optical

P.M. Watts, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, P. Bayvel, M. Glick, M. Lobel, B. Christensen,

P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘An FPGA-based Optical

and Signal Predistortion’, 32nd European Conference on Optical Communications

P.M.Watts, M.Glick, P.Bayvel, R.I.Killey, ‘Performance of Electronic Predistortion

P.M.Watts, R.Waegemans, Y.Benlachtar, V.Mikhailov, M.Glick, P.Bayvel,

Invited Conference Papers

R. I. Killey, P. M. Watts, M. Glick, P. Bayvel, ‘Electronic dispersion compensation

R.I. Killey, P.M. Watts, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, M. Glick, P. Bayvel, ‘Electronic

M. Glick, P. Watts, R. Waegemans, P. Bayvel, R. I. Killey, ‘Electronic signal

R.I.Killey, P.M.Watts, S. J. Savory, R. Waegemans, Y. Benlachtar, V. Mikhailov, M.

P.M.Watts, M. Glick, R. Waegemans, Y. Benlachtar, V. Mikhailov, S. Savory, P.

2.1. Impairments Affecting the Transmission Distance

As stated above, the subject of this thesis is to investigate the maximum

2.1.1. Optical Noise

Power, dBm -10

2.1.2. Chromatic Dispersion

chromatic dispersion2. Thus (represented in baseband, ωo = 0) after transmission of

Figure 3: Dispersion characteristics of various fibre types.

The effect of chromatic dispersion on a binary pulse is shown in Figure 5. The

Figure 4: Intersymbol interference caused by chromatic dispersion.

The pulse spreading due to chromatic dispersion is given by [Gnauck 1997]:

Bit Rate (Gb/s) Transmission Distance

2.1.3. Polarisation Mode Dispersion

2.1.4. Fibre Nonlinearity

where β is the propagation constant, γ is the non-linear parameter of the fibre

2.2. Techniques for Overcoming Chromatic Dispersion

2.2.1. Dispersion Compensating Fibre and Dispersion Management

2.2.2. Optical Adaptive Compensators

2.2.3. Chirped Transmission

2.2.4. Mid-span Phase Conjugation

2.2.5. Electronic Compensation

2.3. Determination of the Maximum Transmission

2.3.1. Bit Error Rate

Figure 7: Typical BER against OSNR curves.

Research results in optical communications used to be presented with target

2.3.2. Required Optical Signal to Noise Ratio

2.3.3. Maximum Transmission Distance – Linear Case

compensator (such as those described in section 2.2.2). By adjustment of the

2.3.4. Maximum Transmission Distance – Nonlinear Case