Advanced Photonics Nexus, Volume. 4, Issue 3, (2025)

DSP-free coherent receivers in frequency-synchronous optical networks for next-generation datacenter interconnects [Early Posting]

Liu Lei... Liu Feng, Peng Cheng, Xue Bo Shieh William |Show fewer author(s)
Author Affiliations
  • China
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    Propelled by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud services and data center applications, next-generation low-power, local-oscillator-less, and DSP-free short-reach coherent optical communication has evolved into an increasingly prominent area of research in recent years. Here, we demonstrate DSP-free coherent optical transmission by analog signal processing in frequency synchronous optical networks (FSON) architecture, which supports polarization multiplexing and higher-order modulation formats. The FSON architecture allows that the numerous laser sources of optical transceivers within a data center can be quasi-synchronized by means of a tree-distributed homology architecture. In conjunction with our proposed novel pilot-tone assisted Costas Loop for an analog coherent receiver, we achieve a record dual-polarization 224-Gb/s 16-QAM 5-km mismatch transmission with reset-free carrier phase recovery in the optical domain. Our proposed DSP-free analog coherent detection system based on the FSON makes it a promising solution for next-generation low-power, high-capacity coherent data center interconnects (DCI).

    Paper Information

    Manuscript Accepted: Mar. 7, 2025

    Posted: Apr. 9, 2025

    DOI: APN