He et al. VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW.

393

Flexible Multiband OFDM

Ultra-Wideband Services Based
on Optical Frequency Combs
Jing He, Fengting Long, Rui Deng, Jin Shi, Min Dai, and Lin Chen

Abstract—In the paper, a flexible multiband orthogonal multiband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) ultra-wideband
(OFDM) ultra-wideband is proposed in the IEEE
service based on optical frequency combs is proposed and
experimentally demonstrated for 5G wireless communica- 802.15.3a and ECMA-368 standards [8]. The multiband
tions. By using optical frequency comb technology, the flex- OFDM ultra-wideband signal with multiple sub-bands is
ibility and capacity of wavelength-division multiplexing generated by the up-conversion of the baseband signal with
passive optical networks (WDM-PONs) can be improved. a time-frequency code (TFC) [8]. In multiband OFDM
Meanwhile, the different sub-bands of multiband OFDM
ultra-wideband signals are modulated with different modu- ultra-wideband services, each sub-band can provide service
lation formats to ensure the data rate needs of different for one user. From the standpoint of multiple sub-bands in
users. An adaptively modulated 128-/64-/32-ary-quadrature- multiband OFDM ultra-wideband, it gives a feasible
amplitude-modulation-encoded multiband OFDM ultra- scheme for the implementation of multiple users in 5G
wideband signal is generated. In addition, a joint channel
estimation method with training sequences and pilot wireless communications. In addition, an adaptive modu-
symbols is applied to improve system performance. After lation scheme can significantly enhance the network
50-km standard single-mode fiber transmission, the experi- flexibility and capacity compared with the use of a single
mental results show that the proposed system can provide modulation format.
bandwidth resources for 15 end users with an average
access rate of 1.781 Gb∕s per user and a high data rate of However, the transmission distance of ultra-wideband
5.343 Gb∕s. systems is restricted to a few meters due to the low
transmitted power of the ultra-wideband signal. Ultra-
Index Terms—Adaptive modulation; Joint channel
estimation; Multiband OFDM ultra-wideband; Optical wideband over fiber technology provides a feasible solution
frequency comb; WDM-PON. to enhance the transmission distance [9]. Several ultra-
wideband over fiber systems are reported, including
impulse radio (IR) ultra-wideband [3,10] and multiband
OFDM ultra-wideband [11]. The multiband OFDM ultra-
I. INTRODUCTION
wideband over fiber in a WDM system can be robust to
crosstalk [11]. However, in these systems [3,10,11], using

D riven by the rapidly growing demands of end users

for high-speed data traffic in 5G wireless communi-
cations, researchers and engineers have paid more atten-
multiple individual lasers as an optical source inevitably
reduces the system’s scalability and raises the cost.
Alternatively, optical frequency comb schemes using
tion to next-generation passive optical networks (PONs), injected gain-switched lasers [12] or electro-optic modula-
such as wavelength-division multiplexing PONs (WDM- tors [13–15] have been investigated. To generate optical
PONs) [1–3]. To meet the requirement of 5G transport, frequency combs with only one laser, the cost and complex-
WDM-PON systems should have features such as a low ity of WDM systems can be cut down. The downstream
power budget, low cost, high data rate connectivity, 6 × 40 Gb∕s transmission of DWDM-PONs based on an in-
and high flexibility. Recently, ultra-wideband technology jected gain-switched optical comb source is reported in [12].
has been regarded as a suitable and promising candidate After cascading a phase modulator (PM) and intensity
for high-speed wireless communications [4–7]. The advan- modulators (IMs), a flat optical comb is generated for a hy-
tages of ultra-wideband technology include high fre- brid WDM-OFDMA-PON [13]. Based on multi-level, multi-
quency spectrum efficiency, low power consumption, band, carrier-less amplitude phase (CAP) modulation, an
high security, immunity to multipath fading, and coexist- 11 × 5 × 9.3 Gb∕s WDM-CAP-PON is proposed, and 11 car-
ence with other wireless technologies [4–6]. Meanwhile, riers are produced with two cascaded PMs [14]. In [15–20],
a Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) is adopted to generate
Manuscript received November 18, 2016; revised February 17, 2017; an optical frequency comb. The number of generated opti-
accepted March 12, 2017; published April 18, 2017 (Doc. ID 281007). cal frequency combs is more than 30 [15,16]; however, the
The authors are with the Key Laboratory for Micro/Nano Opto-electronic flatness of the optical frequency combs is not enough.
Devices of the Ministry of Education, College of Computer Science
and Electronic Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
The optical frequency combs can achieve good flatness with
(e-mail: hnu_jhe@hotmail.com). a two-stage generator [17]. Furthermore, the schemes
https://doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.9.000393 reported in [18–20] can achieve high stability and good

1943-0620/17/050393-08 Journal © 2017 Optical Society of America

394 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017 He et al.

flatness with a simple configuration. Therefore, a WDM- X

D−1−k
PON system based on optical frequency comb technology Bm; k
ym  2D  jbj  k; (3)
and multiband OFDM ultra-wideband can provide flexibil- j
0

ity and a high data rate for 5G wireless communications.

where k is the delay time index ranging from 0 to D − 1,
In the paper, we propose and experimentally demon-
and ym is the mth sample at the receiver. a· and b·
strate a flexible scheme based on optical frequency combs
represent the Golay complementary pair AN∕4 and BN∕4
and multiband OFDM ultra-wideband for multiple users in
at the transmitter.
5G wireless communications. Different sub-bands of a mul-
tiband OFDM ultra-wideband signal are adaptively modu- The timing metric is defined as
lated with different modulation formats to provide services
with multiple data rates. Generally, each sub-band is res- Pm
Mm
; (4)
ponsible for one user’s access. If one user needs a broader Rm
bandwidth, two or more sub-band resources can be served.
Moreover, a joint channel estimation method with training where
sequences (TSs) and pilot symbols is used for signal recov-
ery. In our experiment, after 50 km standard single-mode Pm
jrm; 0j2 ; (5)
fiber (SSMF) transmission, 5 channels carrying 15 sub-
bands can provide bandwidth resources for 15 users with
the highest net bit rate of 2.078 Gb∕s and the lowest net 1 X D−1

bit rate of 1.484 Gb∕s, achieving a bit error rate (BER) be- Rm
jrm; kj2 ; (6)
D − 1 k
0
low the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC)
limitation. The proposed multiband OFDM ultra-wideband
over fiber system integration with optical frequency comb
rm; k
Am; k  Bm; k: (7)
technology can greatly improve the flexibility in spectrum
allocation and capacity. It makes it more attractive for the
As the sample point is the maximum value of Mm, it is
development of optical access networks.
selected as the timing synchronization point.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The digital
signal processing (DSP) for a multiband OFDM ultra- 2) Channel Estimation: A joint channel estimation
wideband transceiver is described in Section II. The system scheme based on pilot symbols and TSs is used to esti-
architecture and experimental setup are presented in mate the channel response in a multiband OFDM ultra-
Section III. Section IV focuses on the experimental results. wideband receiver. Here, the information of the pilot
Finally, Section V concludes the paper. occupies the whole time in a certain frequency, and the
information of the TS occupies the whole frequency at
II. DSP FOR A MULTIBAND OFDM ULTRA-WIDEBAND one time, which can better reflect the characteristics of the
TRANSCEIVER channel’s time and frequency. For the ith sub-carrier, the
channel estimation value with a low-complexity least-
square (LS) algorithm can be expressed as
A. Symbol Synchronization and Channel
Estimation Scheme Yi XiH LS i  Ni
Ĥ LS i


H LS i  X −1 iNi;
Xi Xi
1) Symbol Synchronization: Symbol synchronization (8)
is an essential technique to locate the symbol’s starting
position. In the paper, Golay complementary TS is utilized where Yi is the received data, Xi is the transmitted
to realize symbol timing synchronization [21]. The length of data, H LS i is the channel frequency response function,
one training sequence is N. The sequences A and B are and Ni denotes the additive white Gaussian noise.
a Golay complementary pair with a length of N∕4. The
The TSs are generated with binary phase-shift keying
constructed Golay complementary TS is expressed as
(BPSK) symbols on the even-number sub-carriers, and
PGolay
 AN∕4 O BN∕4 O ; (1) the odd-number sub-carriers are filled with zeros. The
TS-based channel response with the LS algorithm can be
where AN∕4 and BN∕4 are Golay complementary pair se- obtained as
quences, and O is the zero-value sequence. AN∕4 , BN∕4 ,
and O have the same length as N∕4. By utilizing double- Ĥ T i
Y T i∕X T i; (9)
slide windows spaced at distance D, the non-periodic
cross-correlations of the Golay sequences AN∕4 and BN∕4 where Y T i denotes the received TS, and X T i denotes the
are performed at time m, and they are given by transmitted TS. In an optical fiber channel, the transfer
function can be considered flat within the regarded band-
X
D−1−k width, and the channel estimation value of the odd-number
Am; k
ym  jaj  k; (2) sub-carriers can be obtained from the adjacent even-
j
0 number sub-carriers with the help of frequency-domain
He et al. VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 395

Fig. 1. Multiband OFDM ultra-wideband frame structure.

interpolation. After linear interpolation, the channel (QAM) system is measured to choose the modulation for-
frequency response estimated with the TS is Ĥ TL i. mats for the sub-bands. The normalized frequency re-
Meanwhile, pilot symbols are used to estimate the sponses and modulation formats of the three sub-bands
channel information of a current data symbol. The channel are shown in Fig. 2. According to the different transmission
characteristics at the pilot sub-carriers can be given by losses on the three sub-bands, the data sub-carriers on
different sub-bands can be modulated with different
M-QAM. From Fig. 2, it can be seen that the attenuation
Ĥ P i
Y P i∕X P i; (10)
of Band#3 is more serious than those of Band#1 and
Band#2. The higher loss on the high-frequency sub-carriers
where Y P i represents the received pilot symbol, and
is due to an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) with
X P i represents the transmitted pilot symbol. The spline
limited bandwidth [22]. Based on the frequency response,
interpolation is applied to get frequency response Ĥ PS i
128-, 64-, and 32-QAM are deployed for the modulations on
for the current data symbol.
Band#1, Band#2, and Band#3, respectively.
Subsequently, we incorporate Ĥ T i and Ĥ P i to get a
Figure 3 shows the DSP of the transmitter and receiver
more precise channel estimation Ĥi. It is given by
for the adaptively modulated multiband OFDM ultra-
wideband system.
Ĥi
L × Ĥ TL i  1 − L × Ĥ PS i; (11)
1) Transmitter: The DSP for the transmitter in the
where L is the weight factor. Finally, after the equalization adaptively modulated multiband OFDM ultra-wideband
and demapper, the data are restored. Here, the equalized system is depicted in Fig. 3(a). Pseudo-random binary
data X̂ data i can be expressed as sequences (PRBSs) are generated as the payload data.
BPSK and QPSK symbols are used to construct the TSs
X̂ data i
Y data i∕Ĥi; (12) and pilots. Then, the PRBSs are fed into interleavers
and mapped into 32-, 64-, and 128-QAM. The pilots and
where Y data i is the received data. TSs are inserted to obtain the channel information.
Subsequently, OFDM modulation is realized by a 128-point
The frame structure of the multiband OFDM ultra-
inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT). To mitigate the
wideband is constructed as shown in Fig. 1. Four TSs of
inter-symbol interference (ISI) effect, a cyclic prefix (CP)
length 165 samples are followed by 534 data-carrying sym- with a length of 16 is appended to the start of every
bols. The first Golay complementary TS is used to correct OFDM symbol. The digital clipping ratio is set to 13 dB
symbol synchronization, and the other three TSs are ap-
plied for channel estimation. Based on the ECMA-368 stan- Band#1 Band#2 Band#3
dard [8], all 128 sub-carriers include 100 data sub-carriers, 0 8
12 pilot sub-carriers, 10 guard sub-carriers, and 6 zero sub-
carriers. The 10 guard sub-carriers are located on each -2
Normalized Amplitude Response

7
edge of the OFDM symbol. The data on these guard sub-
Bits Located at Sub-carrier

carriers are created by copying over the five outermost data

-4
sub-carriers from the nearest edge of the OFDM symbol [8]. 6
The 12 pilot sub-carriers in every symbol are also deployed
to assist channel estimation. Additionally, the first three -6
5
chosen sub-bands of the multiband OFDM ultra-wideband Band#1 Amplitude Response
signal range from 3.168 to 4.752 GHz. Band#2 Amplitude Response
-8
Band#3 Amplitude Response
Bits Located at Band#1 Sub-carrier 4
Bits Located at Band#2 Sub-carrier
B. DSP for a Multiband OFDM Ultra-Wideband -10
Bits Located at Band#3 Sub-carrier
Transceiver 3
0 100 200 300
Sub-carrier Index
In order to provide a flexible data rate for multiple
users, an adaptive modulation scheme is adopted in the Fig. 2. Normalized amplitude responses of three multiband
multiband OFDM ultra-wideband system. The frequency OFDM ultra-wideband sub-bands and adaptive modulation
response of a 64-ary quadrature amplitude modulation schemes.
396 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017 He et al.

128-point fast Fourier transforms (FFTs), the joint channel

estimation scheme using pilots and TS information is
employed to obtain the channel transfer function for
further channel equalization. Subsequently, different de-
modulators are applied for different sub-bands. Finally,
the recovered bits after de-interleavers are delivered into
the BER or error vector magnitude (EVM) calculation
modules to assess the performance using offline MATLAB.

III. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

A. Flexible Multiband OFDM Ultra-Wideband

Services Based on Optical Frequency Combs

The schematic of flexible multiband OFDM ultra-

wideband services based on optical frequency combs for
5G wireless communications is illustrated in Fig. 4. The
configuration of the direct-detection system is simpler
Fig. 3. Schematic diagrams of adaptively modulated multi-
and more cost effective than that of a coherent system
band OFDM ultra-wideband transceiver: (a) transmitter and [23]. In addition, at the OLT, instead of n lasers in tradi-
(b) receiver. tional WDM systems, an optical frequency comb generator
with one laser can produce n flat optical carriers, which
to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) [1]. results in the flexible adjustment of the channel spacing
In addition, to realize symbol synchronization at the and emission wavelength. A WDM de-multiplexer (DMUX)
receiver, one Golay complementary TS is added at the be- is used to split the optical carriers into different wave-
ginning of each OFDM frame. Then, the baseband OFDM lengths. The different sub-bands of the multiband OFDM
signal utilizing the TFC to achieve digital up-conversion ultra-wideband signals are modulated with different
and the three sub-bands are added together to generate modulation formats to provide services flexibly for end
the 128-/64-/32-QAM-encoded multiband OFDM ultra- users. The electrical multiband OFDM ultra-wideband
wideband signal. signal is modulated onto each optical carrier by means
of an MZM. Then, multiple optical wavelengths carrying
2) Receiver: The DSP for the adaptively modulated multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signals are grouped to-
multiband OFDM ultra-wideband receiver is shown in gether using a WDM multiplexer (MUX). After SSMF
Fig. 3(b). The digital 128-/64-/32-QAM-encoded multiband transmission, a WDM DEMUX is applied to separate the
OFDM ultra-wideband signal is down-converted to the multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signals to different
baseband signal with the corresponding TFC. Then, the optical network units (ONUs). At the ONU side, after a
baseband signal is sent to the symbol synchronization photo-detector (PD) performing optical-to-electrical (O/E)
module. Symbol synchronization can be implemented by conversion, each user is able to recover the data of the cor-
the above-mentioned Golay complementary TS scheme. responding sub-band. In this way, M sub-bands can be
When the start position of a frame signal is found, the assigned to M users in each channel. For the proposed
CP will be removed. After OFDM demodulation by system with adaptively modulated multiband OFDM

Fig. 4. Flexible multiband OFDM ultra-wideband services based on an optical frequency comb.
He et al. VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 397

ultra-wideband, the shared upper limit of N wavelengths is then converted to an electrical multiband OFDM ultra-
N × M users. Moreover, if one user needs a broader band- wideband signal by a 10.561-GSa/s AWG with a 10-bit
width, two or more sub-band resources can be distributed. DAC resolution. The output electrical multiband OFDM
ultra-wideband signal from the AWG with an output
peak-to-peak voltage of 560 mV drives MZM-2 with a direct
B. Experimental Setup current (DC) bias of 2.1 V to generate the optical multi-
band OFDM ultra-wideband signal. The optical frequency
Figure 5 shows the experimental setup of the flexible comb modulated with the multiband OFDM ultra-
multiband OFDM ultra-wideband service. At the OLT, wideband signal after MZM-2 is shown in Fig. 5(b). After
the optical frequency comb scheme with one MZM is uti- an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA-1), the optical
lized to generate a flat optical frequency comb, and the gen- channel located at 193.481 THz corresponding to the first
eration principle is analyzed in [18,19]. The optical comb channel is selected by a wavelength-selective switch (WSS)
generator consists of one tunable external cavity laser with a 25 GHz bandwidth. Then, the selected optical
(ECL), one MZM (MZM-1), two sinusoidal wave oscillators, multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signal is coupled into
and two electrical amplifiers (EA-1 and EA-2). A continu- the SSMF. The fiber loss is 0.2 dB∕km, and the chromatic
ous-wave (CW) light at 1549.16 nm (193.519 THz) is gen- dispersion of the SSMF is 17 ps∕nm∕km.
erated by an ECL with a 100 kHz linewidth. Meanwhile, At the receiver, the optical spectrum after 20 km SSMF
the 19 GHz sine waves RF-1 and RF-2, after passing transmission is inserted, as shown in Fig. 5(c). There is a
through the corresponding EA-1 and EA-2, are injected sidelobe belonging to the left neighborhood optical channel.
into the MZM-1. Then, five lines of optical frequency combs The impact can be negligible because the power difference
with a frequency separation of 19 GHz, flatness of 2 dB, and is about 20 dB. Another EDFA (EDFA-2) and a variable op-
unwanted mode suppression ratio (UMSR) of 20 dB are tical attenuator (VOA) are applied to control the received
generated and illustrated in Fig. 5(a). Subsequently, the optical power. It should be mentioned that EDFA-2 is never
polarization controller (PC) is employed to regulate the employed in the optical back-to-back (OBTB) case. The
light polarization state to maximize the output optical baseband electrical signal can be received by a PD with
power of another MZM (MZM-2). The adaptively modu- a 3 dB bandwidth at 10 GHz. After removing the DC com-
lated 128-/64-/32-QAM-encoded multiband OFDM ultra- ponent using a DC block, the electrical multiband OFDM
wideband signal is generated by offline MATLAB, ultra-wideband signal is captured by a 20-GSa/s digital

-10 0

-20
-20 -10

-30 -20
Power(dBm)

Power(dBm)

Power(dBm)

-30

-40 -30

-50 -40 -40

-60 -50

-50
1548.5 1549.0 1549.5 1550.0 1548.5 1549.0 1549.5 1550.0 1548.6 1548.7 1548.8 1548.9 1549.0
Wavelength(nm) Wavelength(nm) Wavelength(mn)

Fig. 5. Experimental setup and optical spectrum: (a) 5-channel WDM without multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signal, (b) 5-channel
WDM with multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signal, and (c) the first channel after SSMF transmission.
398 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017 He et al.

storage oscilloscope (DSO) with an 8-GHz bandwidth and

an 8-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) resolution.
Each sub-band signal is analyzed by offline DSP for data
recovery.
In our experiment, we investigate the transmission per-
formance of the multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signal
over optical fiber links. The performance of the wireless
transmission is not taken into account. For the three
sub-bands, after removing 7% of the HD-FEC overhead,
the highest net bit rate can be up to 2.078 Gb∕s, and the
lowest net bit rate is 1.484 Gb∕s per sub-band. In addition,
Fig. 6. Measured PSDs of the received 128-/64-/32-QAM multi- the highest data rate provided for one user can reach
band OFDM ultra-wideband signals. 5.343 Gb∕s. The average net bit rate of each sub-band
is 1.781 Gb∕s, and the spectral efficiency (SE) is
1.781∕100∕128  0.528 ≈ 4.32 bit∕s∕Hz. Therefore, the
4x106 total net bit rate is approximately 5 × 3 × 1.781

26.72 Gb∕s. It is noted that 50 or even a 100 Gb∕s data rate
can be achieved by generating more optical carriers or us-
3x106
ing higher modulation formats.
Timing Metric

2x106
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
6
1x10
Figure 6 shows the measured power spectrum of the re-
0
ceived 128-/64-/32-QAM multiband OFDM ultra-wideband
signal captured from the DSO. It can be seen that the
0 2000 4000 6000 8000
Sample Index power fading is about 10 dB. The low power spectral den-
sity (PSD) declines as the frequency of the sub-carrier in-
creases, caused by the frequency-selective fading (FSF)
4x106
effect. Additionally, it is pointed out that there is an
ADC sample clock noise, which can be regarded as an
3x106 additional noise located at 3.75 GHz [1].
Timing Metric

The measured timing synchronization metric of the

2x106
128-/64-/32-QAM multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signal
is shown in Fig. 7(a). As we can see, there is an obvious
1x106 peak of timing synchronization. Meanwhile, Fig. 7(b) is
the detailed impulse-shaped timing metric. The shape of
0 the timing metric is very sharp and has no sidelobe.
This means that the starting position of each 128-/64-/
1800 1825 1850
Sample Index 32-QAM multiband OFDM ultra-wideband signal can be
estimated accurately.
Fig. 7. Measured timing metric: (a) the timing metric of the data Figure 8 shows the OBTB BER performances versus the
frame and (b) the detailed impulse-shaped timing metric. received optical power of the three sub-bands in the first

1 1 1

1.3dB
1.85dB
2.1dB 0.6dB 0.6dB
-log(BER)

0.9dB
-log(BER)
-log(BER)

2 2
2

HD-FEC limitation=3.8×10-3 HD-FEC limitation=3.8×10-3 HD-FEC limitation=3.8×10-3

3 3
Band#1 w/ Joint CE Band#2 w/ Joint CE Band#3 w/ Joint CE
3 Band#1 w/ Pilot Symbol CE Band#2 w/ Pilot Symbol CE Band#3 w/ Pilot Symbol CE
Band#1 w/ Training Seq. CE 4 Band#2 w/ Training Seq. CE 4 Band#3 w/ Training Seq. CE

-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
Received Optical Power(dBm) Received Optical Power(dBm) Received Optical Power(dBm)

Fig. 8. OBTB BER performances of three sub-bands in the first channel versus the received optical power using the joint channel es-
timation method, the pilot-based channel estimation method, and the TS-based channel estimation method: (a) Band#1 (128-QAM),
(b) Band#2 (64-QAM), and (c) Band#3 (32-QAM).
He et al. VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 399

more accurate, including the characteristics of the time

and frequency. The results exhibit that the joint channel
estimation method can enhance the accuracy of channel
estimation and work effectively for the proposed system
providing flexible multiband OFDN ultra-wideband
services.
After 50-km SSMF transmission, the measured BER
performances of each sub-band versus the received optical
power in the first channel are illustrated in Fig. 9. It shows
that, to satisfy the HD-FEC limitation of 3.8 × 10−3, the
required received optical powers are −1.25, −3.1, and
−3.25 dBm for Band#1 to Band#3. Due to the adaptive
modulation scheme, there is a negligible BER difference
between Band#2 and Band#3 at the HD-FEC limitation
of 3.8 × 10−3. The constellations of Band#1, Band#2, and
Band#3 at the received optical power of −3 dBm are
inserted as Figs. 9(a)–9(c). The EVMs for 128-QAM,
Fig. 9. Measured BER of each sub-band versus the received op-
64-QAM, and 32-QAM are −22.89, −21.43, and −18.98 dB,
tical power in the first channel after 50-km SSMF transmission.
respectively.
channel using the joint channel estimation method, the Moreover, the sub-band BER and EVM performances as
pilot-based channel estimation method, and the TS-based a function of the received optical power along fiber links
channel estimation method, respectively. Figures 8(a)–8(c) with 20- up to 50-km SSMFs are depicted in Fig. 10.
are the OBTB BER performances of Band#1 (128-QAM), Figures 10(a)–10(c) are the BER performances of Band#1
Band#2 (64-QAM), and Band#3 (32-QAM), respectively. (128-QAM), Band#2 (64-QAM), and Band#3 (32-QAM), re-
In this paper, the adopted value of weight factor L in spectively. At a BER of 3.8 × 10−3, with respect to the OBTB
the joint channel estimation method is 0.4 [24]. It can case, the power penalties are 1.6, 1.2, and 0.7 dB, respec-
be observed that, compared with only pilot symbols or tively. For the degraded BER performance from the OBTB
the TS channel estimation method, the joint channel es- case for 50-km SSMF transmission, it is due to the effect
timation method can improve receiver sensitivities by of optical fiber dispersion and the noise of the EDFA.
about 0.9 and 2.1 dB for Band#1, 0.6 and 1.85 dB for Meanwhile, the EVM performances of 128-QAM, 64-QAM,
Band#2, and 0.6 and 1.3 dB for Band#3, respectively. and 32-QAM are shown in Figs. 10(d)–10(f). The BER and
The reason for this is that the channel frequency response EVM performances degrade with the increase of the fiber
estimated with the joint channel estimation method is span and the decrease of the received optical power.

OBTB 128-QAM OBTB 64-QAM OBTB 32-QAM

20km 128-QAM 20km 64-QAM 20km 32-QAM
30km 128-QAM 30km 64-QAM 30km 32-QAM
50km 128-QAM 50km 64-QAM 50km 32-QAM
2
2
-log(BER)

-log(BER)

-log(BER)

2 HD-FEC Limitation=3.8×10 -3

HD-FEC Limitation=3.8×10-3
3
3
HD-FEC Limitation=3.8×10-3 1.2dB
4 0.7dB
3
1.6dB 4
5
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
Received Optical Power(dBm) Received Optical Power(dBm) Received Optical Power(dBm)

-18 OBTB 128-QAM -16 OBTB 64-QAM -12 OBTB 32-QAM

20km 128-QAM 20km 64-QAM 20km 32-QAM
30km 128-QAM 30km 64-QAM -14 30km 32-QAM
-18 50km 32-QAM
-20 50km 128-QAM 50km 64-QAM

-16
-20
EVM(dB)

EVM(dB)

EVM(dB)

-22
-18
-22

-24 -20
-24
-22
-26 -26
-24
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
Received Optical Power(dBm) Received Optical Power(dBm) Received Optical Power(dBm)

Fig. 10. Measured BER and EVM performances of three sub-bands versus the received optical power along different lengths of SSMF.
400 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 9, NO. 5/MAY 2017 He et al.

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This work was supported by the National Natural Science
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