Experimental Study of 1.55- $\mu$ m EML-Based Optical IM/DD PAM-4/8 Short Reach Systems

We experimentally evaluate high-speed intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) transmissions with a 1.55-μm broadband electro-absorption modulated laser and pulse amplitude modulations (PAM). We demonstrate 80 Gb/s/λ PAM-4 and 96 Gb/s/λ PAM-8 transmissions with low-complexity digital equalizers at the receiver. Performance comparison with different types of equalizers are performed, including linear symbol-spaced feed-forward equalizer (FFE), fractional (half-symbol) spaced FFE and decision feedback equalizer (DFE), with different tap number. It is found that for both cases, a 6-tap symbol-spaced FFE is sufficient to achieve a stable performance with bit-error-rate below the 7% overhead hard decision forward error correction (7%-OH HD-FEC) threshold over a 4 km standard single mode fiber link. Practical considerations including comparison between adaptive and static equalizer implementation and tolerable fiber chromatic dispersion are discussed.