Experimental Assessment Of Noma-Cap Waveforms For Beyond 5g Optical Fronthaul Applications

The constant growth of traffic demand caused by IoT, cloud computing, and streaming services on personal devices, requires changes in architecture and more sophisticated schemes by pushing forward 5G optical fronthaul applications. An experimental assessment of NOMA-CAP modulation is performed for future fronthauling in beyond 5G scenarios with IM-DD systems for a cost-effective implementation. Two transmitters are compared: an intensity modulated VCSEL as cheapest implementation; versus a tuneable laser source externally modulated by a MZM as reference of best quality. In addition, the sensitivity at 7% overhead FEC limit for two alternative receivers are analysed for a data rate of 14Gbps over 50km of SSMF in 4GHz electrical bandwidth, providing values of -13dBm (PIN) and -25dBm (APD). Moreover, a practical approach for APD is validated by comparison of a PIN with a filtered EDFA pre-amplifier, and an APD based SFP transceiver showing a small sensitivity difference of 0.1dB to 0.5dB.