Paired-subcarrier equalization for phase noise and transmitter IQ skew in digital subcarrier multiplexing system

The digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM) transmission scheme is expected for future ultra-large baud rate transmission. However, the phase noise and transmitter (Tx) IQ skew tolerance are decreased due to the narrow sub-band transmission and conjugated interference from symmetric subcarrier. In this paper, we propose a paired-subcarrier equalization scheme to jointly mitigate the phase noise and Tx IQ skew. We use a phase locking loop (PLL) embedded 4 x 4 MIMO equalizer to simultaneously realize polarization demultiplexing, phase noise and Tx IQ skew compensation. The 4 x 4 MIMO can deal with the paired-subcarrier interference in the DSCM transmission. Besides, since the inner subcarrier suffers smaller interference from its symmetric subcarrier, we estimate the phase noise by inner subcarriers and share the phase noise information with other subcarriers to reduce the overall complexity. Through simulations of 100-GBaud 64-QAM DSCM coherent optical fiber transmission consisting of eight 12.5-Gbaud subcarriers and experiment of 10-GBaud four-subcarriers PM-16QAM transmission, we find that the PLL embedded equalizer for DSCM scheme exhibits better skew and phase noise compensation ability compared with other equalizers. Additionally, we compare the performance of single-carrier and DSCM schemes with the proposed equalizers in simulation. The influence of phase noise and Tx IQ skew on DSCM transmission can be largely relaxed. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement