Proceedings of COIN2008 copyright (c) 2008 IEICE 08 SB 0064
Ultra-High Speed Optical OFDM
Transmission Technologies
Akihide Sano and Yutaka Miyamoto
Abstract—This paper reviews recent progress in 100-Gb/s-class
ultra-high speed optical OFDM transmission technologies. We
describe system configuration based on optical
multiplexing/demultiplexing and transmission performances.
Index Terms—OFDM, digital coherent receiver, chromatic
dispersion, polarization-mode dispersion.
I. INTRODUCTION
D UE to the rapid increase in IP data traffic,
large-capacity and cost-effective transmission systems are
strongly required for realizing future optical transport networks
(OTN). Current commercial SONET/SDH interfaces offer the
40-Gb/s line rate, and higher speed client interfaces such as
100-Gb/s Ethernet are expected in the near future. Therefore,
100-Gb/s-class transmission technologies are being extensively
investigated for backbone OTNs based on WDM transmission
systems [1]. In addition to the requirement of high-speed
channel accommodation, future WDM systems are expected to
offer 10-Tb/s-class total capacity in order to handle the increase
in data traffic. To realize such high-speed large-capacity WDM
systems, high spectral efficiency (SE) modulation/multiplexing
schemes are indispensable.
In 100-Gb/s-class transmission based on direct detection
schemes, the waveform distortion caused by chromatic
dispersion (CD) and polarization-mode dispersion (PMD)
severely restricts the attainable distance. Optical orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is very attractive
because of its superior tolerance to PMD and CD [2]. In this
paper, we review recent progress in 100-Gb/s-class optical
OFDM transmission technologies. Section II describes
transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) configurations that utilize
optical multiplexing/demultiplexing techniques in order to
enable 100-Gb/s-class OFDM transmission. Section III
discusses the transmission performance of high speed optical
OFDM signals.
II. TX AND RX CONFIGURATIONS
In the conventional OFDM system configuration based on
A. Sano and Y. Miyamoto are with the NTT Network Innovation
Laboratories, 1-1 Hikari-no-oka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 239-0847 Japan
(phone: +81-46-859-5214; fax: +81-46-859-5541; e-mail: sano.akihide@
lab.ntt.co.jp).
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1
digital signal processing (DSP), the OFDM signal is
synthesized by inverse FFT operation followed by
digital-to-analog converters (DACs) at the Tx (Fig. 1-a), and
demodulated by FFT operation after sampling at
analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) at the Rx (Fig. 1-d). In
100-Gb/s-class transmission, however, the operation speed of
electronics limits the channel line rate. One approach to
overcome this limitation is the subcarrier multiplexing of
low-speed OFDM signals in the electrical domain [3]. In this
approach, higher order modulation such as 8-QAM format is
used to avoid the bandwidth limitation imposed by EO/OE
conversion. Another approach utilizes optical
multiplexing/demultiplexing techniques. In this approach,
bandwidth requirements on EO/OE conversion can be relaxed,
and thus the use of higher order modulation is not obligatory.
Therefore, higher tolerance towards optical signal-to-noise
ratio (OSNR) can be expected compared to the former
approach. Tx/Rx configurations using optical
multiplexing/demultiplexing techniques proposed for 100-Gb/s
transmission are shown in Fig. 1. In all-optical OFDM,
multiplexing and demultiplexing is done in the optical domain
[4, 5]. At the Tx (Fig. 1-b), optical subcarriers are generated by
modulating a CW light using external intensity/phase
modulators. Each optical subcarrier is then divided,
individually modulated with conventional single-carrier
modulation, and finally coupled to create an OFDM signal. The
baud rate of each subcarrier equals the optical subcarrier
spacing in creating the OFDM signal. At the receiver (Fig. 1-e),
each optical subcarrier is demultiplexed by an optical discrete
Fourier transformer (DFT), which consists of a splitter, optical
delay lines, phase-shifters, an optical gate, and an optical
coupler. This configuration allows low-cost direct detection
Tx/Rx modules to be used for subcarrier
modulation/demodulation. In the electro-optical OFDM
configuration, each optical subcarrier is modulated by a
multi-carrier modulation technique, in which an optical IQ
modulator is used to generate a multi-carrier signal around the
optical subcarrier frequency (Fig. 1-c) [6, 7]. Electro-optical
OFDM Rx is based on the digital coherent receiver
configuration (Fig. 1-f): the received OFDM signal is divided
into several blocks by anti-alias filters in either optical or
electrical domain, and each block is demodulated by an
FFT-based DSP. In both all-optical and electro-optical OFDM,
low optical subcarrier numbers are preferable in order to
minimize cost and complexity. We recently proposed
no-guard-interval coherent optical (CO-) OFDM [8, 9]. This
Proceedings of COIN2008 copyright (c) 2008 IEICE 08 SB 0064 2

scheme adopts the Tx configuration of Fig. 1-b with two optical networks, in which cascaded filtering at the optical nodes limits
subcarriers and polarization multiplexing: a two-subcarrier the attainable distance. We have demonstrated 1300-km
QPSK modulator is realized by hybrid integrating PLC and LN 10-node transmission with 100-GHz-spaced WDM [5], and
lightwave circuits. The Rx consists of a single 20-node transmission with 50-GHz spaced WDM [9].
polarization-diversity digital coherent receiver; polarization-
and subcarrier-demultiplexing is done by DSPs. This IV. CONCLUSION
configuration is very simple and thus appears cost-effective We have discussed 100-Gb/s-class ultra-high speed optical
compared to the other 100-Gb/s-class OFDM systems. OFDM transmission technologies focusing on system
configuration and transmission performances. No guard
III. TRANSMISSION PERFORMANCE interval CO-OFDM is promising because of its simple
In high-speed channel transmission such as 100 Gb/s, configuration, high tolerance to CD/PMD and cascaded
waveform distortion due to CD and PMD is a crucial issue. In filtering, and applicability to various types of fibers.
optical OFDM based on digital coherent receivers, it is possible
to significantly improve the tolerance towards CD and PMD by REFERENCES
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compact signal spectra, and so is suitable for ROADM/OXC

Conventional optical OFDM All-optical OFDM Electro-optical OFDM

(a) (b) (c)
Δf Δf
LD MOD OBPF
f f
f f f 1 f
IQ-MOD
1
MOD 2
Tx 2 Multi-carrier IQ-MOD
DAC IQ Multi-carrier MOD LD generator
Mod.

IFFT
P/S
S/P

Mixer LD generator
DAC
IQ-MOD
MOD nOSC
DSP nOSC DAC
OSC DSP
DAC

(d) (e) (f)

1
2 OE ADC
OE ADC Optical Gate nOSC Pol. diversity OEOEADC ADC DSP
Demod.

Pol. diversity OE ADC Optical Gate 90°

Pol.hybrid
diversity OEOEADC
Rx OEADC
P/S.
FFT
S/P

ADC
Rx 90° hybrid OE ADC Optical Gate LO OEOEADC DSP
LO Rx LO
90° hybrid
Pol. diversity OEADC
ADC
DSP
OE ADC Rx 90° hybrid OEOEADCADC
DSP LO OE ADC

Fig. 1 Tx and Rx configurations

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