Coherent optical OFDM (CO-OFDM) has recently been proposed and the proof-of-concept transmission experiments have shown its extreme robustness against chromatic dispersion and polarization mode dispersion. In this paper, we first review the theoretical fundamentals for CO-OFDM and its channel model in a 2×2 MIMO-OFDM representation. We then present various design choices for CO-OFDM systems and perform the nonlinearity analysis for RF-to-optical up-converter. We also show the receiver-based digital signal processing to mitigate self-phase-modulation (SPM) and Gordon-Mollenauer phase noise, which is equivalent to the mid-span phase conjugation.

Coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is proposed to combat dispersion in optical media. It is shown that optical-signal-to-noise ratio penalty at 10 Gbit/s is maintained below 2 dB for 3000 km transmission of standard-singlemode fibre without dispersion compensation.

In coherent optical systems employing electronic digital signal processing, the fiber chromatic dispersion can be gracefully compensated in electronic domain without resorting to optical techniques. Unlike optical dispersion compensator, the electronic equalizer enhances the impairments from the laser phase noise. This equalization-enhanced phase noise (EEPN) imposes a tighter constraint on the receive laser phase noise for transmission systems with high symbol rate and large electronically-compensated chromatic dispersion.

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.

Coherent optical OFDM (CO-OFDM) has emerged as an attractive modulation format for the forthcoming 100 Gb/s Ethernet. However, even the spectral-efficient implementation of CO-OFDM requires digital-to-analog converters (DAC) and analog-to-digital converters (ADC) to operate at the bandwidth which may not be available today or may not be cost-effective. In order to resolve the electronic bandwidth bottleneck associated with DAC/ADC devices, we propose and elucidate the principle of orthogonal-band-multiplexed OFDM (OBM-OFDM) to subdivide the entire OFDM spectrum into multiple orthogonal bands. With this scheme, the DAC/ADCs do not need to operate at extremely high sampling rate. The corresponding mapping to the mixed-signal integrated circuit (IC) design is also revealed. Additionally, we show the proof-of-concept transmission experiment through optical realization of OBM-OFDM. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first experimental demonstration of 107 Gb/s QPSK-encoded CO-OFDM signal transmission over 1000 km standardsingle-mode-fiber (SSMF) without optical dispersion compensation and without Raman amplification. The demonstrated system employs 2×2 MIMO-OFDM signal processing and achieves high electrical spectral efficiency with direct-conversion at both transmitter and receiver.

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