There has been growing interest in coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM). We aim to present the case that the time for CO-OFDM has come, in terms of the demand from today's ever-advancing optical networks and the availability of its underlying technologies. We first lay out the signal processing aspect for CO-OFDM and then show a 2×2 multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) OFDM representation for the single-mode fiber optical channel. Through numerical simulation and experimental demonstration, we further present and discuss various MIMO-OFDM systems focusing on their polarization-mode dispersion resilience. Among those systems, the 2×1 MIMO-OFDM configuration incorporating polarization-time coding shows promise for optical access networks and broadcast networks. Finally, another class of the frequency-domain equalization techniques, namely, incoherent or coherent optical single-carrier frequency-domain equalization (CO-SCFDE) is discussed and experimentally demonstrated.

Phase estimation is one of the enabling functionalities in coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing (CO-OFDM) receivers. In this letter, we compare pilot-aided and data-aided phase estimation methods for a CO-OFDM transmission experiment at 8 Gb/s over 1000-km standard single-mode fiber without optical dispersion compensation. We also show that as few as five subcarriers are sufficient for pilot-aided phase estimation

The first proof-of-concept experimental demonstration of coherent optical OFDM systems is reported. 128 OFDM subcarriers with a nominal data-rate of 8 Gbit/s are successfully processed and recovered after 1000 km transmission through SSMF fibre without optical dispersion compensation.

There are three major advantages for coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) transmission using digital signal processing. First, coherent detection is realized by digital phase estimation without the need for optical phase-locked loop. Second, OFDM modulation and demodulation are realized by the well-established computation-efficient fast Fourier transform (FFT) and inverse FFT. Third, adaptive data rates can be supported as different quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations are software-defined, without any hardware change in transmitter and receiver. However, it is well-known that coherent detection, OFDM, and QAM are all susceptible to phase noise. In this paper, theoretical, numerical, and experimental investigations are carried out for phase noise effects on high spectral efficiency CO-OFDM transmission. A transmission model in the presence of phase noise is presented. By using simulation, the bit error rate floors from finite laser linewidth are presented for CO-OFDM systems with high-order QAM constellations. In the experiments, the phase noise effects from both laser linewidth and nonlinear fiber transmission are investigated. The fiber nonlinearity mitigation based on receiver digital signal processing is also discussed.

In this paper, we conduct theoretical and experimental study on the PMD-supported transmission with coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM). We first present the model for the optical fiber communication channel in the presence of the polarization effects. It shows that the optical fiber channel model can be treated as a special kind of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) model, namely, a two-input two-output (TITO) model which is intrinsically represented by a two-element Jones vector familiar to the optical communications community. The detailed discussions on variations of such coherent optical MIMO-OFDM (CO-MIMO-OFDM) models are presented. Furthermore, we show the first experiment of polarization-diversity detection in CO-OFDM systems. In particular, a CO-OFDM signal at 10.7 Gb/s is successfully recovered after 900 ps differential-group-delay (DGD) and 1000-km transmission through SSMF fiber without optical dispersion compensation. The transmission experiment with higher-order PMD further confirms the resilience of the CO-OFDM signal to PMD in the transmission fiber. The nonlinearity performance of PMD-supported transmission is also reported. For the first time, nonlinear phase noise mitigation based on receiver digital signal processing is experimentally demonstrated for COOFDM transmission.

This paper discusses the realization of terabit per second high speed and high spectral-efficiency optical transmissions using much lower speed electronics and optoelectronics through parallel processing of coherent optical frequency combs at both the transmitter and receiver. The coherent and parallel processing enables electrical-to-optical and optical-to-electrical (E/O and O/E) conversion of wide-bandwidth optical signals which would otherwise exceeds the capability of conventional optoelectronics. In the first experiment, an optical frequency comb (OFC) generator provides 32 comb lines with less than 5-dB power variation. Subsequently, 1.008-Tb/s modulation capability is realized on 32 × 106 OFDM subcarriers with 16-QAM modulation in a 318-GHz seamless optical bandwidth. It demonstrates an effective way to generate an optical OFDM signal with tens of times wider optical bandwidth than that of analog-to-digital converters and digital-to-analog converters (ADC/DAC). The second experiment demonstrates simultaneous detection of multiple OFDM bands from a 32-band coherent optical OFDM signal using another optical frequency comb, a silica planar lightwave circuit (PLC) that implemented the major optical devices, and two pairs of balanced photodiodes. The experimental results indicate prospects for an optically integrated coherent optical OFDM system on a chip-scale platform.