Bandpass sampling in heterodyne receivers for coherent optical access networks

A novel digital receiver architecture for coherent heterodyne-detected optical signals is presented. It demonstrates the application of bandpass sampling in an optical communications context, to overcome the high sampling rate requirement of conventional receivers (more than twice the signal bandwidth). The concept is targeted for WDM coherent optical access networks, where applying heterodyne detection constitutes a promising approach to reducing optical hardware complexity. The validity of the concept is experimentally assessed in a 76 km WDM-PON scenario, where the developed DSP achieves a 50% ADC rate reduction with penalty-free operation.