Offset Double-Sideband Signal Field Recovery at Low CSPR Using Filter-Assisted Direct Detection

The offset double-sideband (DSB) scheme has attracted attention because it can achieve field recovery at low carrier-to-signal power ratio (CSPR) and improve the spectral efficiency (SE) of self-coherent detection. In this paper, an offset DSB filter-assisted direct detection (FADD) scheme is proposed and studied for the first time, which uses an optical bandpass filter (OBPF) to filter out the optical carrier as the local oscillator for the receiver. As such, signal-signal beat interference (SSBI) can be eliminated. Since the offset DSB signal has a large frequency gap, the requirement for the bandwidth of the OBPF is not high. The performance of the proposed offset DSB FADD scheme is evaluated for 16-QAM signals. It is comprehensively compared with offset DSB carrier-assisted differential detection (CADD) scheme in terms of OSNR sensitivity, optimal CSPR, and receiver power sensitivity. In addition, the effect of frequency gap compression is significant as SSBI is completely eliminated from the system, thereby utilizing as many low-frequency resources as possible and improving SE. Finally, the proposed offset DSB FADD scheme is resilient to the wavelength offset up to several GHz between the transmitter laser and the center wavelength of the OBPF.