Optics Communications 410 (2018) 627–631
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Optics Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom
Power budget enhancement in NG-EPON system employing novel
twisted-PAM4
Longsheng Li
a
, Meihua Bi
a,b,
*, Yan Fu
a
, Xin Miao
a
, Qingming Zhu
a
, Weisheng Hu
a,
**
a
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240, China
b
Hangzhou Dianzi University, College of Communication Engineering, Xiasha Gaojiaoyuan 2rd Street, Hangzhou, 310018, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
Keywords:
Twisted-PAM4
PAM4
PON
Fronthaul
Power budget
a b s t r a c t
In this paper, we firstly design a novel modulation format named Twisted-PAM4 (T-PAM4) for the high-speed NG-
EPON and the PON-based digital fronthaul system. Compared to other high-order modulation formats like 4-ary
pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4), T-PAM4 provides two independent sampling values in each symbol period
and enables two-dimensional symbol decision, which significantly improves the receiver sensitivity and hence
enlarges the system power budget. Based on this advantage, six types of T-PAM4 are experimentally demonstrated
in 28-Gb/s/λ NG-PON and 32-Gb/s/λ PON-based digital fronthaul system. The experimental results show that,
compared to the ordinary PAM4, the T-PAM4 can bring 5-dB and 4-dB extra power budget in NG-EPON and
PON-based fronthaul system respectively. In addition, by experiment, it is also depicted that the T-PAM4 is
remarkably robust to system nonlinearity, which would ease the linearity requirement on system components
and hence reduce system cost.
© 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.
1. Introduction
Recently, driven by the demand for high-bandwidth services such
as high-resolution video, virtual reality and 5G mobile-fronthaul
(MFH) [1], the standardization of 100-Gb/s PON continues to be an
interesting topic in IEEE 802.3 ca Task Force [2,3]. Among all the
high-speed NG-EPON candidates, multiplexing four O-band wavelength
channels to achieve 100-Gb/s peak rate is a popular and cost-efficient
solution. To realize low-cost 25-Gb/s bit rate per wavelength, various
high-order modulation formats with low-bandwidth photoelectrical de-
vices have been proposed and demonstrated in NG-EPON and PON-
based MFH system [4,5]. Among these high-order modulated schemes,
the PAM4 is considered as one of the most popular formats for its
inherent advantages of high spectral efficiency and low-cost imple-
mentation [6]. Whereas, along with the high spectral efficiency, high-
order modulation formats also bring the high requirement for signal
to noise ratio (SNR), thereby decreasing the receiver sensitivity and
reducing the power budget. As one of the most important parameters
in PON-based access system, low power budget would limit the number
of subscribers and increase the cost for system upgrading. Moreover,
the low-bandwidth devices in access network would bring poor sys-
tem performance. So, to enlarge the system power budget as well as
*
Corresponding author at: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240,
China.
**
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: bmhua@hdu.edu.cn (M. Bi), wshu@sjtu.edu.cn (W. Hu).
overcome the distortion caused by low-bandwidth devices, solutions
involving electrical equalization and costly optical components are
widely studied [7–14]. Although optical components such as Erbium
doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) can improve the system power budget,
the cost and the integration will still be a problem in the next few
years. On the other hand, thanks to the development of integrated
circuit (IC), high speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-
to-analog converter (DAC) are becoming mature and high-integrated,
which should be taken full advantage of.
Based on the above-mentioned considerations, for the first time to
our knowledge, a novel modified PAM-4 modulation format (namely
Twisted-PAM4, T-PAM4) is proposed for NG-EPON and MFH system.
For this specially-designed T-PAM4 signal, the symbol period is divided
into two segments, and every symbol presents different electrical level
during the first and second half of the period, thus every symbol
can provide two independent values, making it possible to apply the
two-dimensional decision, thereby improving the system performance.
Through experiment, the performance of six kinds of T-PAM4 with
different twisting rules is tested in NG-EPON system with 28-Gb/s/𝜆
line rate (for typical 100-Gb/s access) and 32-Gb/s/𝜆 line rate (for MFH
scenario). Here, the 3-dB bandwidth of the whole system is less than
13-GHz. Experimental results show that, compared to PAM4, ∼5-dB and
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2017.09.052
Received 13 July 2017; Received in revised form 17 August 2017; Accepted 13 September 2017
0030-4018/© 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.