A robust real-time 100G transceiver With soft-decision forward error correction [Invited]

We demonstrate a 120 Gb/s coherent polarization-multiplexed quadrature-phase-shift-keyed transceiver with soft-decision forward-error-correction (SD-FEC) coding based on Turbo Product Code. This industry-first transceiver module utilizes a 40 nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) application-specific integrated circuit with integrated analog-to-digital conversion, digital signal processing and SD-FEC, and is packaged according to a multi-source agreement from the Optical Internetworking Forum. Through several long-haul and ultra-long-haul system experiments (over 1000 km to 3760 km), we validate the robustness of the transceiver and demonstrate its high tolerance to various system impairments, including fiber nonlinearity, chromatic dispersion up to 60,000 ps/nm, polarization mode dispersion, polarization-dependent loss, polarization transients and multiple-path interference.