ICTON 2011 Tu.D1.

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978-1-4577-0882-4/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE 1
Software-Defined Optical Transmission
Wolfgang Freude
1,2
, Ren Schmogrow
1
, Bernd Nebendahl
4
, David Hillerkuss
1
, Joachim Meyer
3
,
Michael Dreschmann
3
, Michael Huebner
3
, Juergen Becker
3
, Christian Koos
1,2
, Juerg Leuthold
1,2

1
Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics (IPQ), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT ), Germany
2
Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT ), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT ), Germany
3
Institute of Information Processing (ITIV ), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT ), Germany
4
Agilent Technologies, Boeblingen, Germany
Tel: +49 721 608-42492, Fax: +49 721 608-9-42492, e-mail: w.freude@kit.edu
ABSTRACT
Progress in electronic data processing enables software-defined optical (SDO) transmission. Modulation formats
and symbol rates are set by software-controlled field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). We demonstrate a real-
time SDO transmitter for 8 modulation formats, which can be swapped in 5 ns. Single-polarization 64QAM
symbol generation at 28 GBd allows transmitting 168 Gbit/s real-time data. We further present a 101.5 Gbit/s
single-polarization OFDM transmitter based on real-time FPGA processing, where we modulate 58 subcarriers
with 16QAM data. For terabit OFDM reception, optical pre-processing is required to demultiplex high-bitrate
signals down to lower-bitrate tributaries, which then can be processed digitally. We discuss a 10.8 Tbit/s receiver
employing an all-optical fast Fourier transform to demultiplex 75 optical subcarriers modulated with 16QAM-
formated symbols at a rate of 16 GBd.
Keywords: Software-defined optics; advanced modulation formats; field-programmable gate array (FPGA),
all-optical processing, fast Fourier transform (FFT)
1. INTRODUCTION
Recent advances in optical and electronic signal processing enable transmitter and receiver technologies, which
allow for efficiently using the available transmission fibre bandwidth [1]. A record capacity of 101.7 Tbit/s was
demonstrated recently [2], bridging a distance of 355 km standard singlemode fibre, and employing 370 optical
carriers spaced 25 GHz apart. Each carrier transported 128QAM-formated orthogonal frequency division multi-
plex (OFDM) symbols at a total line rate of 147 Gbit/s. The electrical OFDM signals were generated offline. The
fast Fourier transform (FFT) size was 12000 with an electrical subcarrier spacing of 1 MHz (OFDM symbol
duration T
s
= 1 s, 7 bit / symbol, no cyclic prefix, 5 500 subcarriers modulated). These data were input to arbi-
trary waveform generators (AWG, sampling rate 12 GSa/s, bandwidth 6 GHz), which drove the optical IQ-
modulators. In dual-polarization (DP) mode, the spectral efficiency was 137 Gbit/s 370 2 / (25 GHz 370) =
11 bit/s/Hz. An intradyne receiver sampled the down-converted signals, which were again processed offline.
While these results are impressive enough, the need for offline digital signal processing (DSP) prevents a
practical implementation so far. However, employing polarization-multiplexed quadrature phase-shift keying
(PM-QPSK), coherent detection and parallel FPGA-based real-time DSP at 112 Gbit/s [3], WDM signals in 40
channels spaced 100 GHz apart were successfully received after transmission over a 1520 km long fibre link.
Since it is difficult to compensate phase errors by DSP for M-ary signals with M > 32, the recently reported real-
time FPGA-based coherent optical receiver for 1 GBd 64QAM signals represents a significant achievement [4].
Data with a line rate of 6 Gbit/s were demodulated with four 1 GSa/s 6 bit analogue-to-digital converters (ADC).
Besides focussing on high data rates and optimum spectral efficiencies, providers become increasingly aware
that universal transmitters (Tx) and receivers (Rx) with reprogrammable DSP would allow optimum network
utilization [1] with respect to applications, channel requirements and quality of service by properly choosing
multi-carrier and multilevel modulation technologies. Quick time-to-market is another important issue. These
requirements lend themselves to software-defined optical (SDO) transmission in analogy to the well-established
wireless technology of software-defined radio (SDR). The term was introduced [5] by Joseph Mitola III in 1993,
meaning a set of DSP primitives, a meta-level system for combining the primitives into communications sys-
tems functions (transmitter, channel model, receiver, etc.) and a set of target processors on which the software
radio is hosted for real-time communications. Already in 1991, Frowin Derr discussed the concept of digital
demodulation for optical communications [6].
In the following, we describe a software-defined optical multiformat transmitter [7] [8], which allows switch-
ing of 8 modulation formats inside 5 ns without data loss. At a symbol rate of 28 GBd, 64QAM symbols are
generated resulting in a real-time single-polarization (SP) line rate of 168 Gbit/s. We further present a real-time
software-defined OFDM transmitter [9] [10] achieving a SP line rate of 101.5 Gbit/s by computing a 64 point
inverse FFT (IFFT) and modulating 58 electrical subcarriers with 16QAM data. Finally, we report on a DP 10.8
Tbit/s OFDM receiver, where a real-time all-optical FFT processor [11] [12] demultiplexes OFDM signals on 75
optical subcarriers with a 16QAM symbol rate of 18 GBd each, thus enabling DSP. Very recently, the DP line
rate was increased to 26.0 Tbit/s [13] using 325 DP OFDM subcarriers and a 16QAM symbol rate of 10 GBd.
ICTON 2011 Tu.D1.1

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2. SOFTWARE-DEFINED REAL-TIME SP 168 Gbit/s MULTIFORMAT TRANSMITTER
Our SDO transmitter generates 8 modulation formats in real time, namely pulse amplitude modulation (PAM),
phase-shift keying (PSK) and M-ary coded quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). The transmitter supports
binary PSK (BPSK, 2PSK), quadrature PSK (QPSK, 4PSK), 4PAM, 6PAM, 8PSK, 16QAM, 32QAM, and
64QAM at symbol rates up to 28 GBd [8].
The transmitter schematic is shown in Fig. 1. The optical field of an external-cavity laser (ECL) is modulated
with an electro-optic inphase / quadrature-phase modulator (IQ-modulator), which is electrically driven by the
amplified output signals of two Micram digital-to-analogue converters (DAC) [14] with 6 bit resolution, both
clocked at 28 GHz. We use two Xilinx Virtex 5 (XC5VFX200T) FPGA boards. With the help of a 1:128 fre-
quency divider (432 = 128), both DAC provide a 218.75 MHz clock for the FPGA (Clk in Fig. 1). Both
FPGA generate pseudo-random bit sequences (PRBS, length 2
15
1). For I and Q-channel separately, these data
streams drive 6 binary inputs of a FPGA look-up table (LUT), the 6 outputs of which represent one symbol that
drives the DAC with a symbol rate of 28 GBd. To get equally spaced constellation points in the optical domain,
the non-linear transfer function of the MZM is taken account of when storing the symbols within the LUT. The
irregularly spaced electrical output W in Fig. 1 translates to equally spaced levels in the optical domain.
Technically, each FGA board parallelizes (and in fact even sub-parallelizes internally by another factor of 32)
the function of the LUT by using 4 lower clock rate sub-LUT, the outputs of which connect each FPGA to its
associated DAC via
24 high-speed trans-
mitters operating at
7 Gbit/s each
(Data in Fig. 1). A
4:1 multiplexer at
the DAC input then
supplies the symbol
rate of 47 Gbit/s =
28 GBd represent-
ing a maximum
binary data rate of
6 bit28 GHz = 168
Gbit/s. The ana-
logue DAC output
samples have up to
64 amplitude levels
and appear at a rate
of 28 GSa/s. Both I and Q-channels together supply a maximum SP optical data rate of 26 bit28 GHz =
336 Gbit/s. By fully exploiting the 6 bit DAC resolution in I and Q-channel, we would end up with a
(2
6
2
6
= 4 096)QAM format requiring an impractically high signal to noise ratio even when employing forward
error correction (FEC). Pre-compensation of the non-linear MZM transfer function further decreases the resolu-
tion that can effectively be used. Therefore the DAC resolution must be restricted to 3 bit in each channel
(64QAM), which limits the SP optical data rate to maximally 23 bit28 GHz = 168 Gbit/s. For emulating DP
transmission, two delayed orthogonally polarized data streams are superimposed for a data rate of 336 Gbit/s.
With an optical modulation analyser (OMA) we investigate the modulated optical signal. In Fig. 2(ah, i), the
received constellation diagrams for 8 modulation formats including 16QAM (as in Fig. 1) and 64QAM are to be
seen along with the measured error vector magnitudes (EVM, ) and the estimated bit error ratios (BER, ) [15]
[16]. By rewriting the content of the LUT the modulation formats are switched. Changing the modulation format
1 2 3 4 5 6
1E-40
1E-30
1E-20
1E-10
1
10
-9
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

B
E
R
Bits Per Symbol
10
-3
0
5
10
15
20
E
V
M

[
%
]

Fig. 2. Received constellation diagrams, measured EVM and estimated BER values for 8 modulation formats. (a) BPSK at 28 GBd, error-
free, EVM = 5.7 %. (b) QPSK at 28 GBd, error-free, EVM = 8.5 %. (c) 4PAM at 20 GBd, (d) 6PAM at 20 GBd, (e) 8PSK at 28 GBd,
EVM = 12.5 %. (f) 16QAM at 28 GBd, error-free, EVM = 8.6 %. (g) 32QAM at 28 GBd, EVM = 9.1 %, (h) 64QAM at 28 GBd,
EVM = 10.1 %. (i) Measured EVM for BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, 32QAM and 64QAM formats. () FEC limits for a BER of 10
-9
and 10
-3
.
[Figure modified from [8] 2010cIEEE]
DAC
DAC
90
FPGA
FPGA
50/50 PBS
DCA-J
50/50
W X Y
W
X
Y
Clk
Clk
Register
Access
Data
Data

Register
Access
Z
Z
ECL IQ-modulator
N4391A
OMA
EDFA
Decorrelation
delay 5.3 ns

Fig. 1. Transmitter implementation and experimental setup. Two FPGA generate PRBS sequences (length 2
15
1)
and map them to corresponding symbols for feeding the DAC that generate the analogue drive signals for the IQ-
modulator. A narrow-band CW laser source (ECL) provides the optical carrier to be modulated. The pre-
distorted DAC output W (see eye diagram) is amplified and drives the IQ modulator for equally space levels in
the optical domain, see eye diagram at X. and constellations Y, Z. The signal is split, decorrelated and polariza-
tion multiplexed, then amplified and split. The two outputs feed an optical modulation analyser (OMA) and a
digital communications analyser (DCA) with an electrical bandwidth of 70 GHz. The OMA computes the con-
stellation diagrams Y and Z and the EVM for both polarizations. [Figure modified from [8] 2010cIEEE]
ICTON 2011 Tu.D1.1

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(e.g., from QPSK to 16QAM) requires only a single clock cycle (5 ns at 28 GBd). For BER 210
3
, a moderate
FEC with an overhead of 7 % suffices for error-free reception in all cases, Fig. 2(i).
3. SOFTWARE-DEFINED REAL-TIME SP 101.5 Gbit/s OFDM TRANSMITTER
The hardware setup as depicted in Fig. 1 can be also used to generate real-time OFDM symbols [9]. We use 64
subcarriers, 58 of which are modulated: Four pilot tones help in performing phase recovery and symbol window
synchronization, while DC and Nyquist frequency subcarriers are not modulated. As before, a PRBS is proc-
essed, but this time effectively by an electrical 64-point inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT), the binary output
data of which represents the OFDM signal. These data are rescaled and clipped for a minimum quantization and
clipping noise, and then fed to both of the DAC, which in turn drive the IQ-modulator with I and Q-signals (real
and imaginary part of the IFFT, respectively). The received data are processed offline using standard algorithms,
and constellation diagrams along with error-vector magnitudes (EVM) are computed.
For saving FPGA resources, we do not compute the IFFT using the Cooley-Tukey algorithm. Instead, we pre-
compute all subcarriers modulated with all possible symbols and store them in LUT with 6 bit resolution, thus
avoiding complex multiplications at runtime. The compound OFDM symbol is then computed by properly add-
ing up all subcarrier samples in a binary adder tree with 6 stages [9].
Making use of inherent redundancies, especially if the number of points N used in the IFFT is a power of 2, as
much as 83 % of the LUT resources and 33 % of the complex adders can be saved without compromising speed
or computation accuracy [10]. Compari-
sons with other algorithms such as the
FFT heavily depend on the specific im-
plementation on the FPGA. Therefore a
general estimation of performance and
utilized chip area cannot be given easily.
As mentioned previously, the fast LUT
update time in the order of 5 ns is defi-
nitely advantageous.
Our OFDM Tx uses 58 carriers modu-
lated in 16QAM format. It operates at a
symbol rate of 437.5 MBd. This leads to
a line rate of 58 4 bit 4437.5 MHz
= 101.5 Gbit/s. The electrical spectrum of
the received signal is displayed in
Fig. 3(a). The four pilot tones are clearly
visible. The high-frequency drop of the
spectrum resembles a sinc-shape and
stems in part from the narrow rectangles
representing the analogue sample val-
ues in time. In Fig. 3(b) we plot the EVM
for each data carrying subcarrier. The received EVM is mostly below 11 % which corresponds to a BER = 10
3

[15] [16]. This error probability can be improved to error-free reception by state-of-the-art FEC algorithms.
Finally, Fig. 3(c, d) shows two received constellation diagrams for subcarriers 27 and 51.
4. ALL-OPTICAL FFT PROCESSOR FOR A 10.8 Tbit/s OFDM RECEIVER
An OFDM receiver must decode N equidistant superimposed subcarriers, which are separated by a frequency
interval f

= 1 / . Each spectral line carries complex data, which are constant during each OFDM symbol dura-
tion . A complex short-time Fourier analysis of the OFDM signal during retrieves the transmitted data. In the
electrical domain, designing a numerical FFT is complementary to the implementation of an IFFT, see Section 3.
While generating an optical high-capacity OFDM signal is straightforward [2] [11] [12] [13], its reception
is not. The presently achievable DSP speed at the receiver side limits the line rate to about 100 Gbit/s. However,
core-network channels are expected to operate in the future with bitrates even beyond 1 Tbit/s [1], where elec-
tronic processing is impractical and severe power consumption issues arise. Because the spectra of the modu-
lated subcarriers overlap strongly, simple passband filtering is not sufficient for demultiplexing an OFDM sym-
bol. Instead, optical filters must be designed which reproduce the transfer function of an FFT.
For this problem, an all-optical solution incorporating also the necessary serial-to-parallel conversion was
proposed [17] and its feasibility demonstrated experimentally [11] [12] [13]. According to the number N of opti-
cal subcarriers, N 1 delay interferometers (DI) realize, arranged in a cascade of p = log
2
N stages, an N-point
FFT (N = 2
p
being the pth power of 2 as in Section 3). The first stage consists of 1 DI, the second stage of 2 DI,
and the pth stage of 2
p1
DI. The optical fields at the N output arms of the DI cascade represent the short-time
Fig. 3. Measured OFDM spectrum, error vector magnitude and constellation dia-
grams. (a) Received electrical spectrum of OFDM signal. Four pilot tones used for
phase recovery and symbol window synchronization. (b) EVM of modulated subcarri-
ers. Standard bit error ratio (BER) limits for forward-error corrected (FEC) error-
free reception are indicated. (c) Constellation diagram for subcarrier 27, EVM = 7.6 %
and for (d) subcarrier 51 with EVM = 9.7 %. [Figure reprinted from [9] 2011 OSA].
ICTON 2011 Tu.D1.1

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Fourier transform of a
group of N sequential time
samples representing one
OFDM symbol. The rela-
tive delays in each of the p
stages are set to / 2
1
, ,
/ 2
p
, and the relative DI
phases (
11
), (
21
,
22
),
(
31
,
32
,
33
,
34
), , (
p1
,

p2
, ,
pN
) have to be
adjusted appropriately [17].
In Fig. 4, a 3-stage DI
cascade is to be seen for
retrieving one of the eight
outputs of a 8-point FFT at
H. From each of the 3
stages, only one DI is depicted. By a proper adjustment of the phases, each subcarrier of an 8-point FFT can be
isolated in sequence. For a full implementation, each free DI output arm (parallel to the ones denoted by D, E, F
in Fig. 4) must be connected to another DI, so that the serial input at in Fig. 4 is transformed into an 8-fold
parallel output of modulated subcarriers. Time gating by an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) selects the
proper time slot where all 8 DI outputs (in Fig. 4 there is only 1 output at H) actually belong to the same symbol.
The data rate at an N-point FFT processor output is N-fold smaller than the serial optical input line rate. A num-
ber of N coherent receivers then transfer these data to the baseband for further DSP processing.
For demultiplexing, e. g., 8 out of N = 75 [11] [12] or even N = 325 [13] subcarriers, appropriate (overlap-
ping) subgroups can be formed, namely a set of, e. g, 10 or 41 subgrouped 8-point FFT, respectively. The abso-
lute frequency position of a subgroup is fixed by an appropriately chosen bandpass filter, F-G in Fig. 4.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Software-defined optical transmission aims at shifting hardware functionality to reconfigurable software. Possi-
ble price advantages, ease of implementation and flexibility are the main drivers for this endeavour. In this spirit
we demonstrate multiformat QAM and OFDM software-defined transmitters. On the other side, we address
issues in receiving high line rate OFDM signals by using an all-optical FFT processor, thereby significantly
reducing the data rate to a level where electronic processing becomes feasible.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We acknowledge funding in the framework of EU projects ACCORDANCE and EuroFOS. We were further supported through the Xilinx
University Program (XUP), by Micram Microelectronic GmbH, through the Agilent University Relations Program, in the framework of the
German BMBF project CONDOR, by the Karlsruhe School of Optics & Photonics (KSOP), and by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
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Fig. 4. All-optical OFDM receiver setup for 75 subcarriers. The optical FFT at the receiver consists of
a delay interferometer (DI) cascade. The DIs with the shortest differential delays are replaced by a
narrowband filter, sacrificing some performance. Spectra and eye diagrams are shown for points D, E,
F, G, H, and G, H, respectively. In spectrum D, every 2
nd
carrier has been removed, in spectrum E every
4
th
, and in spectrum F every 8
th
carrier has been filtered out. [Figure modified from [12] 2011 OSA]