Reduced-complexity non-coherent soft-decision-aided DAPSK dispensing with channel estimation

Differential Amplitude Phase Shift Keying (DAPSK), which is also known as star-shaped QAM has implementational advantages not only due to dispensing with channel estimation, but also as a benefit of its low signal detection complexity. It is widely recognized that separately detecting the amplitude and the phase of a received DAPSK symbol exhibits a lower complexity than jointly detecting the two terms. However, since the amplitude and the phase of a DAPSK symbol are affected by the correlated magnitude fading and phase-rotations, detecting the two terms completely independently results in a performance loss, which is especially significant for soft-decision-aided DAPSK detectors relying on multiple receive antennas. Therefore, in this contribution, we propose a new soft-decision-aided DAPSK detection method, which achieves the optimum DAPSK detection capability at a substantially reduced detection complexity. More specifically, we link each a priori soft input bit to a specific part of the channel's output, so that only a reduced subset of the DAPSK constellation points has to be evaluated by the soft DAPSK detector. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed soft DAPSK detector exhibits a lower detection complexity than that of independently detecting the amplitude and the phase, while the optimal performance of DAPSK detection is retained

Implementation of Carrier Phase Recovery Circuits for Optical Communication

Fiber-optic links form a vital part of our increasingly connected world, and as the number of Internet users and the network traffic increases, reducing the power dissipation of these links becomes more important. A considerable part of the total link power is dissipated in the digital signal processing (DSP) subsystems, which show a growing complexity as more advanced modulation formats are introduced. Since DSP designers can no longer take reduced power dissipation with each new CMOS process node for granted, the design of more efficient DSPalgorithms in conjunction with circuit implementation strategies focused on power efficiency is required.One part of the DSP for a coherent fiber-optic link is the carrier phase recovery (CPR) unit, which can account for a significant portion of the DSP power dissipation, especially for shorter links. A wide range of CPR algorithms is available, but reliable estimates of their power efficiency is missing, making accurate comparisons impossible. Furthermore, much of the current literature does not account for the limited precision arithmetic of the DSP.In this thesis, we develop circuit implementations based on a range of suggested CPR algorithms, focusing on power efficiency. These circuits allow us to contrast different CPR solutions based not only on power dissipation, but also on the quality of the phase estimation, including fixed-point arithmetic aspects. We also show how different parameter settings affect the power efficiency and the implementation penalty. Additionally, the thesis includes a description of our field-programmable gate-array fiber-emulation environment, which can be used to study rare phenomena in DSP implementations, or to reach very low bit-error rates. We use this environment to evaluate the cycle-slip probability of a CPR implementation

Synchronization in all-digital QAM receivers

The recent advance in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology has been largely embraced by the communication industry, which views this technology as an effective and economical alternative to the design of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). The primary reasons for switching to FPGAs are lower development and non-recurring engineering costs, the flexibility to design to a preliminary standard and adapt the design as the standard evolves, as well as the option of performing software updates in the field. A sector with strong interest in FPGAs is the coaxial cable TV/Internet distribution industry. The creation of soft preliminary standards by the standards organization governing the industry has been the main catalyst for the massive adoption of FPGAs by small to medium size companies, which see this technology as an opportunity to compete in this open market. Both the circuit speed and the economy of FPGA technology depend upon using algorithms that map efficiently into its fabric. Often it is prudent to sacrifice performance to improve either clock speed or economy when developing with FPGAs. The purpose of this research is to both revise and devise synchronization algorithms / structures for cable digital receivers that are to be implemented in FPGA. The main communication scheme used by the coaxial cable distribution industry is digital Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). The problem of synchronizing to the QAM signal in the receiver is not a new topic and several synchronization-related circuits, which were devised with ASICs implementation in mind, can be found in the open literature. Of interest in this thesis is the non-data-aided digital timing synchronizer that was proposed by D'Andrea to recover timing with no knowledge of the transmitted data. Accurate timing estimation was achieved by reshaping the received signal with a prefilter prior to estimating the timing. A problem with D'Andrea's synchronizer is that the prefilter for reshaping the signal is a relatively long Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter, whose implementation requires a large number of multipliers. This may not have been an issue with ASICs in as much as the number of hardwired multipliers on a chip is not limited as it is in an FPGA chip. One contribution in this research is to propose an alternative to D'Andrea's synchronizer by replacing the long FIR filter with two single-pole Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filters that are directly placed inside the timing recovery loop. This novel architecture, which drastically reduces the number of multipliers, is well suited for FPGA implementation. Non-data-aided feedforward synchronizers, which use the same prefilter as D'Andrea's synchronizer, have been receiving significant attention in recent years. Detailed performance analysis for these synchronizers can be found in the open literature. These synchronizers have the advantage of using a feedfordward structure rather than a feedback structure, as it is the case in D'Andrea's synchronizer, to estimate the timing. While D'Andrea's synchronizer has an advantage in performance over a non-data-aided feedforward synchronizer, this has not been reported in the literature. In this thesis a second contribution consists of thoroughly analyzing the steady state timing jitter in D'Andrea synchronizer by deriving a closed-form expression for the noise power spectrum and a simple equation to estimate the timing jitter variance. A third contribution is a novel low-complexity and fast acquisition coherent detector for the detection of Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) (i.e., 4-QAM) symbols. This detector performs carrier phase synchronization much faster than a conventional coherent detector. The acquisition time is comparable to that of a differential detector. The fast acquisition comes at the expense of phase jitter, and the end result is a 1 dB performance loss over theoretical coherent detection. This detector can be used in place of the differential detector with no economic penalty. Doing so yields a performance advantage of about 2 dB over differential detection

Design of APSK Constellations for Coherent Optical Channels with Nonlinear Phase Noise

We study the design of amplitude phase-shift keying (APSK) constellations for a coherent fiber-optical communication system where nonlinear phase noise (NLPN) is the main system impairment. APSK constellations can be regarded as a union of phase-shift keying (PSK) signal sets with different amplitude levels. A practical two-stage (TS) detection scheme is analyzed, which performs close to optimal detection for high enough input power. We optimize APSK constellations with 4, 8, and 16 points in terms of symbol error probability (SEP) under TS detection for several combinations of input power and fiber length. Our results show that APSK is a promising modulation format in order to cope with NLPN. As an example, for 16 points, performance gains of 3.2 dB can be achieved at a SEP of 10^-2 compared to 16-QAM by choosing an optimized APSK constellation. We also demonstrate that in the presence of severe nonlinear distortions, it may become beneficial to sacrifice a constellation point or an entire constellation ring to reduce the average SEP. Finally, we discuss the problem of selecting a good binary labeling for the found constellations. For the class of rectangular APSK a labeling design method is proposed, resulting in near-optimal bit error probability.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communication

A survey on OFDM-based elastic core optical networking

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technology that has been widely adopted in many new and emerging broadband wireless and wireline communication systems. Due to its capability to transmit a high-speed data stream using multiple spectral-overlapped lower-speed subcarriers, OFDM technology offers superior advantages of high spectrum efficiency, robustness against inter-carrier and inter-symbol interference, adaptability to server channel conditions, etc. In recent years, there have been intensive studies on optical OFDM (O-OFDM) transmission technologies, and it is considered a promising technology for future ultra-high-speed optical transmission. Based on O-OFDM technology, a novel elastic optical network architecture with immense flexibility and scalability in spectrum allocation and data rate accommodation could be built to support diverse services and the rapid growth of Internet traffic in the future. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on OFDM-based elastic optical network technologies, including basic principles of OFDM, O-OFDM technologies, the architectures of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks, and related key enabling technologies. The main advantages and issues of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks that are under research are also discussed