Spectrally efficient direct-detected OFDM transmission employing an iterative estimation and cancellation technique.

We demonstrate a linearly field-modulated, direct-detected virtual SSB-OFDM (VSSB-OFDM) transmission with an RF tone placed at the edge of the signal band. By employing the iterative estimation and cancellation technique for the signal-signal beat interference (SSBI) at the receiver, our approach alleviates the need of the frequency gap, which is typically reserved for isolating the SSBI, and saves half the electrical bandwidth, thus being very spectrally efficient. We derive the theoretical model for the VSSB-OFDM system and detail the signal processing for the iterative approach conducted at the receiver. Possible limitations for this iterative approach are also given and discussed. We successfully transmit a 10 Gbps, 4-quadrature-amplitude-modulation (QAM) VSSB-OFDM signal through 340 km of uncompensated standard single mode fiber (SSMF) with almost no penalty. In addition, the simulated results show that the proposed scheme has an approximately 2 dB optical-signal-to-noise-ratio (OSNR) gain and has a better chromatic dispersion (CD) tolerance compared with the previous intensity-modulated SSB-OFDM system.