Novel Distribution Matcher Design for Short Length Frames Based on Non-Binary Convolutional Codes

We propose a distribution matcher that enables probabilistic constellation shaping while ensuring low-complexity dematching techniques. The proposal is based on non-binary convolutional codes, designed to respect a given optimal symbol distribution. In addition to lowering the dematching complexity, the proposed structure is shown to reduce the latency, to respect the target distribution with a low overhead and to outperform existing solutions with more than 0.3dB. It is also shown that, while being able to respect the target distribution for short frame lengths, the proposed technique helps enhancing the resilience of the optical system in question to the non-linearity effects.