Optical Time-Frequency Packing: Principles, Design, Implementation, and Experimental Demonstration

Time-frequency packing (TFP) transmission provides the highest achievable spectral efficiency with a constrained symbol alphabet and detector complexity. In this work, the application of the TFP technique to fiber-optic systems is investigated and experimentally demonstrated. The main theoretical aspects, design guidelines, and implementation issues are discussed, focusing on those aspects which are peculiar to TFP systems. In particular, adaptive compensation of propagation impairments, matched filtering, and maximum a posteriori probability detection are obtained by a combination of a butterfly equalizer and four 8-state parallel Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) detectors. A novel algorithm that ensures adaptive equalization, channel estimation, and a proper distribution of tasks between the equalizer and BCJR detectors is proposed. A set of irregular low-density parity-check codes with different rates is designed to operate at low error rates and approach the spectral efficiency limit achievable by TFP at different signal-to-noise ratios. An experimental demonstration of the designed system is finally provided with five dual-polarization QPSK-modulated optical carriers, densely packed in a 100 GHz bandwidth, employing a recirculating loop to test the performance of the system at different transmission distances.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication in the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technolog

Time-Frequency Packing for High Capacity Coherent Optical Links

We consider realistic long-haul optical links, with linear and nonlinear impairments, and investigate the application of time-frequency packing with low-order constellations as a possible solution to increase the spectral efficiency. A detailed comparison with available techniques from the literature will be also performed. We will see that this technique represents a feasible solution to overcome the relevant theoretical and technological issues related to this spectral efficiency increase and could be more effective than the simple adoption of high-order modulation formats.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1406.5685 by other author

Improving the Spectral Efficiency of Nonlinear Satellite Systems through Time-Frequency Packing and Advanced Processing

We consider realistic satellite communications systems for broadband and broadcasting applications, based on frequency-division-multiplexed linear modulations, where spectral efficiency is one of the main figures of merit. For these systems, we investigate their ultimate performance limits by using a framework to compute the spectral efficiency when suboptimal receivers are adopted and evaluating the performance improvements that can be obtained through the adoption of the time-frequency packing technique. Our analysis reveals that introducing controlled interference can significantly increase the efficiency of these systems. Moreover, if a receiver which is able to account for the interference and the nonlinear impairments is adopted, rather than a classical predistorter at the transmitter coupled with a simpler receiver, the benefits in terms of spectral efficiency can be even larger. Finally, we consider practical coded schemes and show the potential advantages of the optimized signaling formats when combined with iterative detection/decoding.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Sub-Nyquist Field Trial Using Time Frequency Packed DP-QPSK Super-Channel Within Fixed ITU-T Grid

Sub-Nyquist time frequency packing technique was demonstrated for the first time in a super channel field trial transmission over long-haul distances. The technique allows a limited spectral occupancy even with low order modulation formats. The transmission was successfully performed on a deployed Australian link between Sydney and Melbourne which included 995 km of uncompensated SMF with coexistent traffic. 40 and 100 Gb/s co-propagating channels were transmitted together with the super-channel in a 50 GHz ITU-T grid without additional penalty. The super-channel consisted of eight sub-channels with low-level modulation format, i.e. DP-QPSK, guaranteeing better OSNR robustness and reduced complexity with respect to higher order formats. At the receiver side, coherent detection was used together with iterative maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) detection and decoding. A 975 Gb/s DP-QPSK super-channel was successfully transmitted between Sydney and Melbourne within four 50GHz WSS channels (200 GHz). A maximum potential SE of 5.58 bit/s/Hz was achieved with an OSNR=15.8 dB, comparable to the OSNR of the installed 100 Gb/s channels. The system reliability was proven through long term measurements. In addition, by closing the link in a loop back configuration, a potential SE*d product of 9254 bit/s/Hz*km was achieved

A super-nyquist architecture for reliable underwater acoustic communication

A natural joint physical and link layer transmission architecture is developed for communication over underwater acoustic channels, based on the concept of super-Nyquist (SNQ) signaling. In such systems, the signaling rate is chosen significantly higher than the Nyquist rate of the system. We show that such signaling can be used in conjunction with good "off- the-shelf" base codes, simple linear redundancy, and minimum mean-square error decision feedback equalization (MMSE-DFE) to produce highly efficient, low complexity rateless (i.e., "fountain") codes for the severe time-varying intersymbol-interference channels typical of this application. We show that not only can SNQ rateless codes approach capacity arbitrarily closely, but even particularly simple SNQ-based rateless codes require the transmission of dramatically fewer packets than does traditional ARQ with Chase combining.United States. Office of Naval Research. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (Grant N00014-07-1-0738)United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant FA9550-11-1-0183)Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1557/10

FTN Signaling In the Saturation Regime: Spectral Efficiency Improvement

Faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling is investigated in future satellite communication standardization for an improved spectral efficiency considering the increasingly constrained resource. Previous studies showed that FTN lower modulation orders compressed in time-domain could reach the spectral efficiency of uncompressed higher modulation orders. The FTN gain in terms of transmission rate is obtained at the price of a turbo-equalization at the receiver, increasing the complexity. The increased capacity in DVB-S2X’s transmissions is due to innovations increasing the fluctuation of the complex envelop of the transmitted signal. Since the satellite’s payload introduces higher non-linear distortions with increased fluctuations, the growing receiver’s complexity is unavoidable. However, in this non linear regime, the complexity of the FTN receiver is not this detrimental compared with those of a classical Nyquist receiver. For a similar spectral efficiency, its lower Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR), making the non-linearities treatment easier, makes this innovation suitable for future satellite communications, especially when the payload is operated in the saturation regime. In this paper, we show that compression offers a gain between 10 and 20 in terms of spectral efficiency when compared to Nyquist signaling, both equalized thanks to the MAP symbol detection based on the Volterra series model of non-linearities