FPGA implementation of a MIMO DFE in 40 GB/S DQPSK optical links

In this paper, an FPGA implementation of a Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) Decision Feedback equalizer (DFE) is proposed, for the electronic compensation of the impairments in 40Gb/s Intensity Modulated Direct Detection (IM/DD) optical communication links employing NRZ DQPSK signaling. The proposed equalizer is used for the electronic compensation the residual Chromatic Dispersion (CD) along the installed optically compensated optical paths. The required processing rate is achieved by applying intensive pipelining and parallelism in the original architecture of the equalizer. At the given processing rate, a 8-input 2-output DFE involving three taps feedforward filtering and two taps backward filtering is implemented on a single, cutting edge technology, Xilinx FPGA device

High-Speed, High-Performance DQPSK Optical Links with Reduced Complexity VDFE Equalizers

Optical transmission technologies optimized for optical network segments sensitive to power consumption and cost, comprise modulation formats with direct detection technologies. Specifically, non-return to zero differential quaternary phase shift keying (NRZ-DQPSK) in deployed fiber plants, combined with high-performance, low-complexity electronic equalizers to compensate residual impairments at the receiver end, can be proved as a viable solution for high-performance, high-capacity optical links. Joint processing of the constructive and the destructive signals at the single-ended DQPSK receiver provides improved performance compared to the balanced configuration, however, at the expense of higher hardware requirements, a fact that may not be neglected especially in the case of high-speed optical links. To overcome this bottleneck, the use of partially joint constructive/destructive DQPSK equalization is investigated in this paper. Symbol-by-symbol equalization is performed by means of Volterra decision feedback-type equalizers, driven by a reduced subset of signals selected from the constructive and the destructive ports of the optical detectors. The proposed approach offers a low-complexity alternative for electronic equalization, without sacrificing much of the performance compared to the fully-deployed counterpart. The efficiency of the proposed equalizers is demonstrated by means of computer simulation in a typical optical transmission scenario