Symbol synchronization and sampling frequency synchronization
techniques in real-time DDO-OFDM systems
Ming Chen
a
, Jing He
a,
n
, Zizheng Cao
a
, Jin Tang
a
, Lin Chen
a
, Xian Wu
b
a
Key Laboratory for Micro/Nano Optoelectronic Devices of Ministry of Education, School of Information Science and Engineering,
Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
b
School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100 044, China
article info
Article history:
Received 14 February 2014
Received in revised form
2 April 2014
Accepted 7 April 2014
Available online 21 April 2014
Keywords:
Symbol synchronization
Sampling frequency synchronization
Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM)
Real-time signal processing
abstract
In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a symbol synchronization and sampling
frequency synchronization techniques in real-time direct-detection optical orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (DDO-OFDM) system, over 100-km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) using a
cost-effective directly modulated distributed feedback (DFB) laser. The experiment results show that the
proposed symbol synchronization based on training sequence (TS) has a low complexity and high
accuracy even at a sampling frequency offset (SFO) of 5000-ppm. Meanwhile, the proposed pilot-assisted
sampling frequency synchronization between digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and analog-to-digital
converter (ADC) is capable of estimating SFOs with an accuracy of o ±5-ppm for initial SFOs as large as
1000-ppm. Moreover, the sampling frequency synchronization technique can also compensate SFO
effects within a small residual SFO caused by deviation of SFO estimation and low-precision or unstable
clock source. The two synchronization techniques are suitable for high-speed DDO-OFDM transmission
systems.
Crown Copyright & 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Due to the growing demand for communication bandwidth, the
current wire- and wireless-based access techniques will not meet
the ever-increasing bandwidth requirement. The real-time (RT)
optical OFDM systems have attracted a lot of attention due to its
powerful digital signal processing (DSP), flexible dynamic band-
width allocation and high spectral efficiency. Compared with
coherent optical OFDM (CO-OFDM), intensity-modulation and
direct-detection optical OFDM (DDO-OFDM) are simpler and cost-
effectiave. Moreover, OFDM-based passive optical network (OFDM-
PON) has been proposed as a key optical access network technique
for the future [1].
The synchronization techniques in OFDM systems are very
important. For the DDO-OFDM system, the synchronization tech-
niques are mainly focused on symbol synchronization and sam-
pling frequency synchronization. A symbol synchronization error
brings about a fraction of a fast Fourier transform (FFT) window to
occur in an extended region of an adjacent symbol, leading to the
degradation of system performance. On the other hand, the
sampling frequency offset (SFO) between the digital-to-analog
converter (DAC) in the transmitter and analog-to-digital converter
(ADC) in the receiver can lead to three different effects: amplitude
reduction, phase rotation of the mapped QAM symbol and inter-
carrier interference (ICI) caused by the loss of orthogonality
between the sub-carriers [2].
For the high-sp ee d optica l OFDM system, the dat a rate i s
several orders of magnitud e highe r than wire l es s counterp ar t,
but the state-of- the-art FPGA can only operate at about a few
hundreds megahertz. Instead of the serial data processing, the
parallel algorithm should be c onside red. Therefore, in orde r to
achieve a hardware implementation of symbol sync hronization
for optical OFDM transmission systems efficiently, a novel 16-
parallel symbol synchronization method for real-time coherent
optical OFDM system was proposed [3].However, this approach
haslesstolerancetointer-symbolinterference(ISI).Asimple
symbol syn chronization technique utilizing subtraction and
Gaussian windowing was proposed and implemented in DD-
OOFDM re ceiver [4,5]. However, it requires a large number of
training symbols and may be not suitable for burst transmission
system. I n [6 ], a simple training sequence (TS)-based symbol
synchronization was proposed for the homodyne coherent
optical receiver. In order to avoid the heavy computation, the
accuracy of this synchronization technique was decreased. In
addition, to reduce or avoid SFO effects, a method was used to
estimate the SFO in the receiver, and then feedback the value to
a voltage co ntroller o scillator (VCO) f or eliminating the SFO
effects [5], but this method needs a stable and high-precision
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journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom
Optics Communications
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2014.04.011
0030-4018/Crown Copyright & 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 073188821097.
E-mail address: hnu_jhe@hotmail.com (J. He).
Optics Communications 326 (2014) 80–87