70 Gbps 4-PAM and 56 Gbps 8-PAM Using an 850 nm VCSEL

We present 56 Gbps unequalized 8-pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM) real-time transmission over 50 m of multimode fiber and 70 Gbps 4-PAM operation with offline equalization. FEC would be necessary in both schemes. The bit-rates are given taking into account the FEC overhead needed to reach a BER below 10
^-12
. The experiments were performed with an 850 nm vertical cavity surface emitting laser with 20 GHz bandwidth and a 22 GHz photoreceiver. We show that 8-PAM modulation requires channel bandwidth comparable with the symbol rate to avoid excessive ISI penalty and that equalization of 4-PAM signal can significantly improve achievable bit-rates.