Pseudo Optical PAM-N Signal Using Externally Modulated Lasers

We propose a pseudo optical N-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PO PAM-N) signal using a few externally-modulated lasers (EMLs) operating at different wavelengths, which is suitable for upgrading the transmission speed over an optical link of < 10 km single-mode fiber with low-cost components. To compare a PO PAM-N signal with that of a standard optical PAM-N signal, we perform experiments for evaluating the performance of a 51.56-Gb/s PO PAM-4 signal and standard 51.56-Gb/s optical PAM-4 signal. The receiver sensitivity (at $BER=10^{-5}$) of the PO PAM-4 signal is 1.5 dB better than the receiver sensitivity of a standard optical PAM-4 signal. We also investigate the feasibility of PO PAM-N (N = 4, 8, and 16) signals operating at 103.12 Gb/s, considering relative intensity noise, timing jitter, extinction ratio (ER) of EMLs, and dispersion. From the results, a PO PAM-8 signal performs better than PO PAM-4 and PO PAM-16 signals at 103.12 Gb/s. Finally, we suggest a timing control method to suppress the effect of dispersion in a PO PAM-N signal. We show that the tolerance to dispersion of a 103.12-Gb/s PO PAM-8 signal can be improved to ${\pm}40ps/nm$ by applying a proposed scheme.