Experimental Demonstration of Nonlinearity and Phase Noise Tolerant 16-QAM OFDM W-Band (75–110 GHz) Signal Over Fiber System

We propose a nonlinearity and phase noise tolerant orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) W-band signal over fiber system based on phase modulation and photonic heterodyne up-conversion techniques. By heterodyne mixing the phase-modulated optical OFDM signal with a free-running laser in the photodiode, the constant envelope OFDM W-band wireless signal is obtained to suppress the nonlinear impairments. Moreover, the phase noises of the beating lasers appear as additive terms to the desired signal, and could be easily filtered out without complex phase noise estimation and compensation algorithms. In our experiment, 4 Gb/s QPSK and 8 Gb/s 16-QAM constant envelope OFDM W-band signals are transmitted over 22.8 km single mode fiber and 2.3 m air distance with achieved bit-error-rate performance below the forward error correction limit.