High speed single-wavelength modulation and transmission at 2 μm under bandwidth-constrained condition

The 2-μm optical band has gained much attention recently due to its potential applications in optical fiber communication systems. One constraint in this wavelength region is that the electrical bandwidth of components like modulators and photodetectors is limited by the immature manufacturing technologies. Here we experimentally demonstrated the high-speed signal generation and transmission under bandwidth-constrained scenario at 2-μm. It is enabled by the direct-detection optical filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) modulation technique with constant amplitude zero autocorrelation (CAZAC) equalization. We achieved a single wavelength 80 Gbit/s data rate using the 16-QAM FBMC modulation format which is the highest single channel bit rate at 2-μm according to our best knowledge. The signal is transmitted through a 100m-long solid-core fiber designed for single-mode transmission at 2-μm. The measured bit error rates of the signals are below the forward error correction limit of 3.8 × 10^-3, and the 100m-fiber transmission brings negligible penalty.