Digital-Analog Hybrid Optical Access Integrating 56-Gbps PAM-4 Signal and 5G mmWave Signal by Spectral Null Filling

A bandwidth-efficient and low-cost spectral-null-filling scheme simultaneously delivering a 56-Gbps 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) digital signal and a 10 × 400-MHz analog radio frequency (RF) signal on a single wavelength is demonstrated for high-capacity wired and wireless optical access networks. The data rate of the PAM-4 signal is consistent with the next-generation passive optical network (PON), and the PAM-4 signal inherently provides a spectral null at 28 GHz, which can be filled with the RF signal exactly at the 5G-specified millimeter wave (mmW) band. Since pulse shaping is not essential in this hybrid transmission system, a low-cost 2-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is adopted for the PAM-4 signal generation. Volterra nonlinear equalizer is adopted to effectively eliminate the analog-to-digital crosstalk without reserving a frequency gap in between. The digital-analog hybrid signal is simultaneously transmitted over a 25-km standard single-mode fiber in telecom C-band and the impact of chromatic dispersion on the number of supported mmW bands is analyzed. In addition, three types of hybrid transmitters are experimentally demonstrated, among which the first-time proposed IQ-modulator-based hybrid transmitter shows the best performance.