Optically equalized 10 Gb/s NRZ digital burst-mode receiver for dynamic optical networks

A 10Gb/s NRZ burst- mode optical receiver suitable for receiving asynchronous bursts with power variations of up to 7 dB is presented. The digital burst mode receiver is based on a standard AC- coupled photodiode followed by asynchronous analogue to digital conversion at 20 GS/ s. Symbol timing, amplitude and baseline wander corrections are implemented in digital signal processing without the need for additional linecoding, such as 8B10B, and special AC- coupling schemes. It is assumed that G. 709 framing together with enhanced FEC is used therefore the receiver is characterized using a pre eFEC BER of 10(-3) at an input OSNR of 10 dB. We show that the addition of an electronically controlled SOA for optical power equalization before the receiver extends the burst- to- burst dynamic range from the 7 dB provided by the digital receiver alone to 16.5 dB. The large dynamic range, low overhead, and burst length versatility make this type of receiver ideal for applications in both synchronous and asynchronous dynamic network architectures with burst timescales ranging from nanoseconds through to continuous data. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.