Modeling and compensation of nonlinear distortion in direct-detection optical Fast-OFDM systems

Fast-OFDM based intensity-modulation and direct-detection (IM/DD) has been proposed for the deployment of cost-efficient optical access networks, due to simple implementation and high spectral efficiency. In this work, the generalized memory polynomial (GMP) is firstly applied to model the nonlinear characteristic of IM/DD Fast-OFDM links, including memory effects. After model validation using measured data of a 10 km single mode fiber link, the GMP is used for performance investigations of a combined clipping and digital post-distortion approach to optical Fast-OFDM, considering both 4PAM and 8PAM modulation formats and different number of Fast-OFDM subcarriers. This work firstly reports performance results of optical 8PAM-Fast-OFDM systems using 2PAM-based training signals for digital post-distortion and FFT-based channel estimation. Excellent performance improvements are achieved using the proposed distortion compensation scheme, relative to conventional system implementation.