Constrained Coding for Hardware-friendly Intensity Modulation

Abstract

An advanced signal design for boosting the performance of binary-modulated IM/DD communication systems is presented. Multiple light sources are jointly modulated so that the optical signals superimpose at the receiver. The superimposed signal is of high rate. The switching sequences are constrained to match the physical properties of the transmit hardware. A graph-based representation is used to design a low-complexity block code, enabling the use of the binary superposition modulation scheme under investigation in a practical IM/DD setup. Based on this coded signal design measurement results on power consumption and simulation results on bit error rate performance are presented.