Digital Predistortion and Post Equalization Techniques in Optical Communications

Optical interconnects are forefront in supporting today’s explosive traffic increase for both intra and inter data centers. Optical communications have traditionally relied on baseband modulation with no carrier, and remains so for most of the short reach interconnects. On the other hand, the long-haul transport has entirely adopted the recent innovation of digital coherent detection which opened the path for the modulation on optical carriers. In this talk, we will review the digital predistortion and post equalization techniques used for short reach and long haul optical communications including the recent progress and future challenges.