Experimental Layered/Enhanced ACO-OFDM Short-Haul Optical Fiber Link

Asymmetrically clipped optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM) is theoretically more optically power efficient than dc-biased OFDM (DCO-OFDM); unfortunately, its spectral efficiency is halved to accommodate the clipping distortion. Recently, layered/enhanced ACO-OFDM has been developed to mostly regain the lost spectral efficiency, and theoretically compared with other modulation formats. In this letter, we experimentally demonstrate L/E-ACO-OFDM for the first time over a fiber link. We transmit over a 19.8-km single mode fiber at 4.375 Gb/s, and show a 2-dB improvement in signal quality for the same laser bias current and received optical power over DCO-OFDM.