Non-Orthogonal Signal Transmission Over Nonlinear Optical Channels

Abstract

The performance of spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) in optical communication systems is investigated considering the impact of fiber nonlinearities. Relative to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), sub-carriers within SEFDM signals are packed closer at a frequency spacing less than the symbol rate. In order to recover the data, a specially designed sphere decoding detector is used at the receiver end to compensate for the self-created inter carrier interference encountered in SEFDM signals. Our research demonstrated the benefits of the use of sphere decoding in SEFDM and also demonstrates the performance improvement of long-haul optical communication systems using SEFDM compared to the use of conventional OFDM, when fiber nonlinearities are considered. Different modulation formats ranging from 4QAM to 32QAM are studied and it is shown that, for the same spectral efficiency and information rate, SEFDM signals allow a significant increase in the transmission distance compared to conventional OFDM signals.

Keywords

• Spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM)
• orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
• optical fiber communication
• nonlinear fiber channel