Design of MLSD-Based Receivers for Short-Range Optical Communications Using the Volterra Expansion

TL;DR

This paper proposes and analyzes three MLSD-based receiver designs using the Volterra expansion for short-range optical communications, aiming to reduce complexity while maintaining performance in mitigating chromatic dispersion effects.

Contribution

It introduces three novel MLSD receiver designs based on the Volterra model, balancing complexity and performance for IM/DD optical systems in metro applications.

Findings

All three designs effectively mitigate chromatic dispersion.

Performance varies with modulation schemes like OOK and PAM.

Numerical results demonstrate competitive BER performance.

Abstract

Maximum Likelihood Sequence Detectors (MLSD) have been largely used to mitigate the Chromatic Dispersion (CD) in Intensity Modulation/Direct Detection (IM/DD) optical communication systems. For practical applications, the high complexity of the receivers remains an important issue. In this paper, we analyze the design of MLSD-based receivers using the Orthogonal Volterra Kernel Model for IM/DD optical communication systems in Metro Optical applications. We discuss the impact in complexity and performance of the main parameters of the model and provide three design options for the MLSDbased receiver. Finally we provide numerical simulations showing the Bit Error Rate (BER) performances of the three considered designs for both On-Off Keying (OOK) and higher order Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM).