Sensitivity to signal quantization of 43 Gb/s and 107 Gb/s optical 16-QAM OFDM transmission with coherent detection

The sensitivity of optical orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission to the finite resolutions of the digital-to-analog (DAC) and analog-to-digital converters (ADC) has been analyzed using numerical simulations. We show that for back-to-back configuration the requirements regarding the number of quantization bits for the DACs are similar to the ones of the ADCs. After transmission over metro and long-haul distances a higher resolution of the DAC/ADC is required compared to back-to-back configuration. We show that after transmission it is sufficient to enhance either the ADC resolution or the DAC resolution by 1 bit.