On the performance of the electrical equalization technique in MMF links for 10-gigabit ethernet

In this paper, the electrical equalization technique utilized in multimode fiber (MMF) links for 10-Gigabit Ethernet is reported. This paper presents and compares three kinds of equalizers: linear equalizer, decision feedback equalizer (DFE), and a nonlinear finite-impulse-response DFE (NL-FIR-DFE) based on the analysis of nonlinear operations of direct modulation and detection in MMF links. Computer simulations reveal that NL-FIR-DFE exhibits superior performance in comparison with normal DFE. The equalization performance for an MMF channel with bandwidth 500 MHz-km as well as 160 MHz-km is demonstrated. It is demonstrated that with direct modulation of cost-effective vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) or Fabry-Perot laser, the transmission distance for installed MMF with a bandwidth of 500 MHz-km at 10 Gb/s can be extended to 300 m with an appropriate offset restricted mode launch condition by utilizing normal DFE and to more than 650 m for NL-FIR-DFE. Moreover, it is shown that the transmission distance for an MMF with a bandwidth of 160 MHz-km can reach 300 m with more than seven times bandwidth improvement by using NL-FIR-DFE.