On the Multipath Interference Mitigation for High-speed IM-DD Transmissions with Nyquist Subcarrier Modulation

The performance of high-speed intensity modulation direct detection (IM-DD) transmissions is severely degraded due to the occurrence of multipath interference (MPI), especially when a higher-order modulation format is utilized. Here, we propose and demonstrate, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, that a Nyquist subcarrier modulation (Nyquist-SCM) format inherently exhibits resistance to the MPI. We experimentally evaluate the MPI tolerance by transmitting 56 Gbit/s PAM-4 signals and Nyquist-SCM 16QAM signals over the 2 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) when the C-band semiconductor laser with a linewidth of 1.7 MHz is utilized. In comparison with the PAM-4 format, the Nyquist-SCM 16QAM format can lead to an enhanced MPI tolerance of 4 dB at the KP4-FEC threshold of BER = 2 × 10 −4 . In addition, even with the help of MPI mitigation for the PAM-4 signals based on two newly reported methods, the utilization of Nyquist-SCM 16QAM signal can still guarantee an improved MPI tolerance of 1 dB.