Volterra Expansion Based Intra Channel Nonlinear Effect Equalization Method for Optical OFDM/OQAM Systems

Optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing offset quadrature amplitude modulation (O-OFDM/OQAM) system relaxes the orthogonal condition of the sub-carriers from the complex domain to the real field. Inter-symbol-interference (ISI) and inter-carrier-interference (ICI) could be suppressed by using filter banks with promising time-frequency-localization (TFL) properties. Therefore, cyclic prefix (CP) inserted between consecutive OFDM blocks could be removed for O-OFDM/OQAM system to improve system spectral efficiency. When passing through fiber channel, O-OFDM/OQAM faces serious intrinsic imaginary interference (IMI) induced by chromatic dispersion (CD), and fiber nonlinear effect, which would deteriorate system performance evidently. Fiber nonlinear effect induced interference is a great impairment for long haul transmission O-OFDM/OQAM system, and can not be equalized directly by using nonlinear equalization method designed for traditional optical OFDM. There is still much room for improvement of nonlinear equalization method for O-OFDM/OQAM. In this paper, we systematically study Volterra expansion based nonlinear equalization method (VENE) for O-OFDM/OQAM. We theoretically deduce simplified Volterra series expansion nonlinear transmission matrix (SVEM) for O-OFDM/OQAM based on mathematic deduction. With SVEM, intra channel nonlinear effect induced distortions could be modeled and estimated. By using specially designed pilot blocks, we obtain approximate solution of SVEM and perform effective VENE with very limited complexities. As shown in multiple Montel Carlo simulation results, nonlinear robustness for O-OFDM/OQAM has been improved significantly thanks to VENE, with various transmission distances and system parameters.