Transceiver Impairment Mitigation by 8×2 Widely Linear MIMO Equalizer With Independent Complex Filtering on IQ Signals

High-order modulation formats with high symbol rates are promising candidates for meeting the growing traffic requirements of digital coherent transmission. In using these modulation formats, the impact of transceiver impairment on the signal quality becomes significant. In this paper, we propose an 8×2 widely linear (WL) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) equalizer with independent complex filtering on IQ signals to mitigate linear transceiver impairments. Furthermore, we extend the equalizer for digital subcarrier (SC) multiplexing. Accordingly, a 16×4 WL MIMO equalizer is also proposed to mitigate linear transceiver impairments, through application to a pair of SC inputs. Experimental results show that, for transmission of a 58-GBaud polarization-multiplexing 64 quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-64QAM) single-carrier signal, the proposed method effectively compensates for various receiver impairments and also mitigates transmitter (Tx) impairments. Q-penalties of 0.1 dB up to a 10-ps skew, 2.5-dB gain imbalance, 7.2-degree phase error, and –15-dB crosstalk in Tx were achieved for 100-km standard single-mode fiber transmission. Moreover, for a 29-GBaud PM-64QAM dual-SC signal, the proposed 16 × 4 WL MIMO equalizer shows transceiver impairment mitigation performance similar to that in the single-carrier case, even though dual-SC transmission is less tolerant of laser phase noise.