40-Gbps vestigial sideband half-cycle Nyquist subcarrier modulation transmission experiment and its comparison with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

We experimentally demonstrate the superior performance of a 40-Gbps 16-QAM half-cycle Nyquist subcarrier modulation (SCM) transmission over a 100-km uncompensated standard single-mode fiber using dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator-based vestigial sideband intensity modulation and direct detection. The impact of modulator chirp on the system performance is experimentally evaluated. This Nyquist-SCM technique is compared with optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing in both back-to-back and 100-km transmission experiments, and the results show that the Nyquist system has a better performance.