Low Hardware-Complexity 100G Transceiver Using A Single DAC and Two ADCs

We present and study the performance of a low-complexity 100G transceiver. This transceiver uses one digital-to-analog convertor (DAC) and a single Mach Zehnder modulator (MZM) at the transmitter side while a pair of balance photodetectors and two analog-to-digital convertors (ADCs) at the receiver side, reducing the components count by 75% at the transmitter and 50% of the receiver compared to conventional coherent transmitters/receiver. We demonstrate that this transceiver can benefit from coherent amplification in grey optics scenario, showing 1 dB SNR margin to the FEC limit in a 40 km link with 12 dB power budget. We also analyze its performance after 400 km transmission showing that its robustness against SOP variations and frequency detuning of the transmitted laser or local oscillator. Sufficient SNR margin is measured for the different cases, >3.5 dB for the case of DFB laser as well as for frequency detuning of ± 1.5 GHz. These results demonstrate that this transceiver could be adopted as a low-cost application requiring low capacity.