Experimental Demonstration and Field-Trial of an Improved Optical Fast OFDM Scheme Using Intensity-Modulation and Full-Field Detection

We experimentally investigate an improved fast orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme using intensity modulation and full-field detection. This new fast OFDM algorithm exhibits better back-to-back and transmission performance than the conventional one, and is shown to support a 40-Gb/s signal over a 480-km re-circulating loop-based single-mode fiber (SMF) with 1-dB penalty. We compare this scheme with the direct-detection (DD) system using the same algorithm, and show that the DD system cannot support 60-km SMF at 40 Gb/s. Finally, we demonstrate the proposed scheme over 124 km of BT Ireland's field-installed fiber without inline optical amplification. The results show that this scheme can be a promising solution to address the gap between direct detection and coherent detection for applications in short metro networks and long-reach Ethernet and access networks.