Terabit-Per-Second Optical Super-Channel Receiver Models for Partial Demultiplexing of an OFDM Spectrum

Terabit-per-second (Tb/s) transmission capacity for the next generation of long-haul communicationnetworks can be achieved using multicarrier optical super-channel technology. In an elastic orthogonalfrequency division multiplexing (OFDM) super-channel transmission system, demultiplexing a portion ofan entire spectrum in the form of a subband with minimum power is critically required. A major obstacleto achieving this goal is the analog-to-digital converter (ADC), which is power-hungry and extremelyexpensive. Without a proper ADC that can work with low power, it is unrealistic to design a 100G coherentreceiver suitable for a commercially deployable optical network. Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is oftenseen as a primary technique for understanding partial demultiplexing, which can be attained either opticallyor electronically. If fairly comparable performance can be achieved with an all-optical DFT circuit, thena solution independent of data rate and modulation format can be obtained. In this paper, we investigatetwo distinct OFDM super-channel receiver models, based on electronic and all-optical DFT-technologies,for partial carrier demultiplexing in a multi-Tb/s transmission system. The performance comparison of thereceivers is discussed in terms of bit-error-rate (BER) performance KCI Citation Count: 1