Investigation of 56-GBd PAM4 bandwidth and chromatic dispersion limitations for data center applications

We investigate some key requirements for PAM4 operation at 56 Gbaud focusing on short-reach intra-data center interconnect. We report simulated results of bandwidth limitations for transmitter and receiver sides components with and without pulse shaping, presenting the penalties imposed in each scenario. We also evaluate chromatic dispersion tolerance for different values of bandwidth limitations, presenting the maximum possible reach without dispersion compensation. These analyses are important for an appropriate design of optical transmission systems employing 100 Gbps per wavelength.