Frequency Dependent ENoB Requirements for M-QAM Optical Links: An Analysis Using an Improved Digital to Analog Converter Model

Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) are a key technology for high-speed optical links and are widely deployed. A new and improved model for a DAC that accurately accounts for the frequency dependent nature of ENoB and is computationally efficient is validated through both simulations and experiments. Furthermore, the impact of the various model parameters such as quantization, timing jitter and bandwidth, on the performance of 16QAM, 64QAM, and 256QAM are presented.