Comparison of DC-Value Method and Kramers–Kronig Receiver in Optical OFDM SSB-DD Transmission

Short reach optical communications are desperate for cost-effective solutions to improve capacity and compatibility in dealing with massive access and applications. Single sideband-direct detection (SSB-DD) is highly recognized for improving capacity with single PD, but it is confronted with signal-signal beating interference (SSBI). Recently, a DC-Value method has been proposed for optical signal phase retrieval for single carrier signal transmission. To further explore the effectiveness and compatibility of DC-Value method, in this letter for the first time, the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based multi-carrier modulation formats are processed by the DC-Value method in the receiver. Simulation results demonstrate that, for both OFDM and Nyquist-shaped single carrier (SC), the DC-Value method is beneficial in applying lower sampling rate to achieve comparable transmission performance than that of Kramers-Kronig receiver. In addition, althrough OFDM holds 2 dB increment of the optimum carrier-signal power ratio (CSPR) than Nyquist-SC, it offers more robustness to fibre transmission.