Demonstration of 48-Gb/s 16-QAM signal transmission using half cycle sub-carrier modulation in intensity modulation/direct detection system

A simple spectral-efficiency intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) system based on half cycle sub-carrier modulation (SCM) signal is proposed for short reach fiber communications in this paper. The signal impairment of frequency selective fading due to fiber chromatics dispersion (CD) is mathematically analyzed. To reduce the performance deterioration caused by the non-flat transfer function, digital pre- and post-equalization is applied in the system. The peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of the signal is also discussed in comparison with that of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). The transmission of 16-QAM half cycle SCM signal with a sub-carrier frequency of half the symbol rate and Nyquist pulse shaping is experimentally demonstrated. The bit-error rate (BER) of 48 Gb/s polarization multiplexing division (PDM) 16 QAM half cycle SCM signal is less than 7% forward-error-correction (FEC) threshold of 3.8×10−3 after transmission over 83 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF).