On the Adaptive Software-Defined

LDPC-Coded Multidimensional Spatial-MIMO

Multiband Generalized OFDM Enabling
Beyond 10-Tb/s Optical Transport
Volume 5, Number 1, February 2013

Ivan B. Djordjevic, Senior Member, IEEE

Tao Liu, Student Member, IEEE
Ting Wang

DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2013.2238619
1943-0655/$31.00 Ó2013 IEEE
IEEE Photonics Journal Adaptive Spatial-MIMO Multiband OFDM

On the Adaptive Software-Defined

LDPC-Coded Multidimensional
Spatial-MIMO Multiband Generalized OFDM
Enabling Beyond 10-Tb/s Optical Transport
Ivan B. Djordjevic,1 Senior Member, IEEE, Tao Liu,1 Student Member, IEEE,
and Ting Wang 2

1
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA
2
NEC Laboratories America, Princeton, NJ 08540 USA

DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2013.2238619
1943-0655/$31.00 Ó2013 IEEE

Manuscript received December 5, 2012; revised January 1, 2013; accepted January 4, 2013. Date of
publication January 9, 2013; date of current version February 6, 2013. This paper is supported in part by
the NSF under Grants CCF-0952711 and EEC-0812072 and in part by NEC Laboratories America, Inc.
Corresponding author: I. B. Djordjevic (e-mail: ivan@ece.arizona.edu).

Abstract: Future Internet technologies will be affected by limited bandwidth of information

infrastructure, high energy consumption, and heterogeneity of optical networks. In order to
simultaneously solve these problems, we propose an adaptive multidimensional mode-
multiplexed software-defined LDPC-coded modulation scheme suitable for few-mode-fiber-
optic communications enabling beyond 10-Tb/s optical transport. This scheme employs the
optimum multidimensional signal constellations and generalized OFDM operation principle.
The proposed scheme significantly outperforms the corresponding scheme based on con-
ventional polarization-division multiplexed QAM.

Index Terms: Microwave photonics signal processing, few-mode/few-core fiber-optics

communications, mode division multiplexing (MDM), low-density parity-check (LDPC)
codes, OFDM, adaptive coding, spatial MIMO, multidimensional coded modulation.

1. Introduction
The exponential Internet traffic growth projections have placed enormous transmission rate demand
on the underlying information infrastructure at every level, from the core to access networks. The
100-Gb/s Ethernet (100 GbE) standard has been adopted (IEEE 802.3ba) [1], and 400-GbE and
1-Tb/s Ethernet (1 TbE) are already under consideration [2]–[4]. There are several technologies,
such as DWDM, OTDM, multiband OFDM, and polarization-division multiplexed (PDM) QAM,
which can potentially be used to deliver optical TbE. However, some practical challenges still exist
with respect of using these techniques as enabling technologies for optical TbE. For instance, PDM
QAM requires huge QAM constellations to reach terabit-per-second range with commercially
available symbol rates. Moreover, the terabit optical Ethernet will be affected not only by limited
bandwidth of information infrastructure but also by its energy consumption [2]. Another important
problem is related to heterogeneity of optical networks. Namely, in optically routed networks,
different lightwave paths can experience different penalties due to deployment of reconfigurable
optical add–drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and wavelength cross-connects, so that their OSNRs can
be quite different at destination sides. In order to provide seamless integrated transport platforms,
which can support heterogeneous networking, it is essential to have opportunity to change the error

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IEEE Photonics Journal Adaptive Spatial-MIMO Multiband OFDM

Fig. 1. Conceptual diagram of spectral–spatial processing enabling up to 50-Tb/s Ethernet.

correction strength depending on channel conditions, by using the channel state information ob-
tained from monitoring channels.
In order to solve these problems simultaneously, we propose an adaptive software-defined
LDPC-coded multiband generalized OFDM (GOFDM) scheme with spatial MIMO that advocates
the use of all available degrees of freedom for conveyance of the information over few-mode fibers
(FMFs), few-core fibers (FCFs), or few-core-FMFs (FCFMFs). In GOFDM, orthogonal subcarriers
are used as basis functions for multidimensional signaling [3]. The hybrid degrees of freedom
include amplitude, phase, frequency, polarization, and spatial modes. The GOFDM supper-carriers
(containing multiple mutually orthogonal GOFDM bands) and GOFDM subcarrier (within single
GOFDM band) create a spectral component in the proposed scheme. The adaptive coding is
performed by partial reconfiguration of corresponding parity-check matrix. Therefore, through
GOFDM and spectral/mode-division multiplexing (MDM), we can achieve fine granularity and ultra-
high spectral efficiency, enabling the future hybrid multidimensional adaptive software-defined
optical transport. Due to its flexibility, the proposed adaptive software-defined quasi-cyclic-LDPC-
coded spectral–spatial multiplexed coherent optical (CO) GOFDM represents a best suited coded-
modulation scheme to be used for ultra-high-speed optical transport over FMFs, FCFs, and
FCFMFs. The energy-efficient optical transport has been achieved through the use of multidimen-
sional signal constellation and properly chosen signal constellation design. The optimum multidi-
mensional signal constellations are obtained by optimum signal constellation design (OSCD)
algorithm [4]. In proposed scheme, simultaneous rate adaptation and signal constellation size
selection is performed so that the product of number of bits per symbol  code rate is closest to the
channel capacity. To further improve the flexibility of this scheme, we employ the OSCDs of signal
constellation sizes that are not power of two.
The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we describe the proposed adaptive software-
defined LDPC-coded multidimensional multiband GOFDM scheme with spatial-MIMO processing.
The performance analysis is performed in Section 3. The Section 4 is devoted to important
concluding remarks.

2. Adaptive Software-Defined LDPC-Coded Multidimensional Multiband

GOFDM With Spatial MIMO
To facilitate the explanation of the proposed scheme, we first describe the organization of spectral–
spatial OFDM frame, which is depicted in Fig. 1. The frame is flexible and can support 50-Tb
Ethernet. It is organized into five band groups with center frequencies being orthogonal to each
other. Each spectral component caries 400-Gb Ethernet (400 GbE), while each spectral group
carries 2-TbE traffic. We can employ a three-step hierarchical architecture with a building block
being a 400-Gb/s signals originating either from 4  100 GbE channels, 1040 GbE, or one
400-GbE channel, respectively. Also, several optical subcarriers of all-optical OFDM scheme can
be used to create a supper channel structure. Next, 400-GbE spectral slots are arranged in spectral
band groups to enable 2-Tb Ethernet. By combining two spectral band groups, the scheme can

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IEEE Photonics Journal Adaptive Spatial-MIMO Multiband OFDM

Fig. 2. Proposed adaptive software-defined LDPC-coded multidimensional GOFDM scheme: (a) gene-
ric architecture, (b) details of LDPC-coded GOFDM transmitter corresponding to ith spatial mode, and
(c) the configuration of add–drop mode (de)multiplexer. To facilitate explanation only signal polarization
state is shown.

enable 4 TbE. We assume that five spectral band groups (and possibly more) can be aligned along
the optical spectrum as a content of the spatial mode. The second layer is related to spectral-
division multiplexing, resulting in 10-Tb/s aggregate data rate per spatial mode, corresponding to
10 TbE. By combining two spatial modes, the scheme is compatible with 20 TbE. Finally, the fiber
link layer is implemented by combining the signals from spatial modes to achieve 50-TbE optical
transmissions. The proposed scheme represents one of the possible combinations; the spectral–
spatial arrangement can also be done in a different way. We should also notice that we assumed
that 25% of the line bit rate is occupied by advanced FEC schemes, such as LDPC codes.
We now describe the proposed adaptive software-defined LDPC-coding scheme with mode-
multiplexed multidimensional GOFDM, which is shown in Fig. 2. To facilitate explanation, only single
polarization is shown. In GOFDM scheme, we consider the orthogonal subcarriers as basis functions
for multidimensional signaling. The operation principle of this scheme is similar to conventional
OFDM, except from the mapping and demapping rules. The independent LDPC-coded optical
GOFDM signals are first spectrally multiplexed to create spectral band group, and the corresponding
supperchannel OFDM signals are then coupled into the FMF by mode multiplexer, as shown in
Fig. 2(a). The coherent detection with mode demultiplexers is used to detect the OFDM signals after
2000 km of FMF transmission. After the GOFDM receivers, we can compensate the distortion and
coupling introduced by FMF by using training frames and pilot subcarriers, in a conventional way.
As outlined in introduction, the rate-adaptive coding is an important component of the proposed
scheme, as in optically routed networks, different lightwave paths can experience different penalties
due to deployment of ROADMs and wavelength cross-connects, so that their OSNRs can be quite
different at destination sides. To provide seamless integrated transport platforms, which can
support heterogeneous networking, we need to change the error correction strength depending on
channel conditions.
The code-rate adaptation in quasi-cyclic LDPC code design [2] can be performed by selecting
different number of block rows in corresponding parity-check matrix (H-matrix). The code-rate

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Fig. 3. The 24-ary 3-D OSCD constellation is decomposed in two subconstellations: 8-ary
subconstellation (blue points) is transmitted over the x-polarization, and 16-ary subconstellation is
transmitted over the y-polarization. The coordinates correspond to three orthogonal spatial modes.

adaptation is performed by partial reconfiguration of decoder, by changing the size of corresponding

block submatrix of H-matrix and/or varying the number of employed block rows while keeping
codeword length intact. Since we employ quasi-cyclic LDPC codes, the corresponding encoders
can be represented in so-called systematic-circulant form from their parity-check matrices, given in
circulant form, which is the subject of [5]. The corresponding encoders require the use of shift
registers and combinational logic only and as such are not discussed here. (For additional details,
anP interested reader is referred to [5].) The aggregate data rate of the proposed scheme is given by
2ð j mj ÞRRs N1 N2 N3 , where the factor two comes from two polarizations, R denotes the code rate,
Rs denotes the symbol rate, N1 denotes the number of bands within the spectral group, N2 denotes
the number of spectral groups, and N3 denotes the number of spatial bands. The OSCD signal
constellation of size M is decomposed in subconstellations of sizes Mi such that M ¼ M1 þ
M2 þ . . . . The first incoming mi bits are used to select the points from Mi ¼ 2mi -ary subconstellation.
Different subconstellations are associated with orthogonal spatial modes. The purpose of the
constellation decomposition is to provide more flexibility for adaptive modulation and coding as the
constellation sizes that are not power of two can be used, which allows finer granulation of aggre-
gate data rate. For instance, the aggregate data rate of 24-ary constellation is 2ðlog2 M1 þ
log2 M2 ÞRRs N1 N2 N3 ¼ 2  ð3 þ 4Þ  0:8  36 GS/s  5  5  5 ¼ 50:4 Tb/s, which compatible
with 50 TbE. In this example, we decomposed the signal constellation as 8 þ 16, and the first
three bits of incoming sequence are used to select the point from 8-ary subconstellation, while the
next four bits are used to select the point from 16-ary subconstellation. The corresponding con-
stellation is shown in Fig. 3. Another advantage of this approach when used in polarization
multiplexing/mode multiplexing is to improve the tolerance to imperfectly compensated PMD or
mode coupling. Namely, in 24-ary OSCD constellation, the first subconstellation is associated with
first polarization (spatial mode) and the second subconstellation with the second polarization
(spatial mode). With conventional PDM/MDM, typically, the same constellations are used and when
PMD (mode coupling) is imperfectly compensated the coordinates of corresponding constellation
points overlap each other resulting in high sensitivity to residual crosstalk. On the other hand, in our
proposal, the points from different subconstellations belong to the same original parent constella-
tion, and in the presence of residual crosstalk, the corresponding coordinates do not overlap,
resulting in better tolerance to residual crosstalk. In Fig. 2(b), we provide details of LDPC-coded
GOFDM transmitter corresponding to the ith spatial mode. The mi independent data streams are
encoded using parallel ðn; k Þ LDPC encoders of code rate R ¼ n=k . The outputs of encoders are
written row-wise into corresponding block interleaver and readout column-wise. The mi bits are used
to select the coordinates of corresponding N-dimensional OSCD subconstellation of the mapper.
The constellation points of subconstellations corresponding to ði  1Þ, i, and ði þ 1Þ modes belong to
the same parent constellation so that the scheme is tolerant to imperfect mode-coupling

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Fig. 4. (a) FMF model in strong coupling regime, (b) 2-D arrangement of pilots for OFDM channel
estimation.

compensation, particularly in the presence of fiber nonlinearities. The coordinates of N-dimensional

constellation are used as inputs of IFFT block. Other steps are similar to conventional CO-OFDM.
Based on channel state information, obtained from monitoring channels, LDPC encoders adjust the
error correction strength as explained above. Finally, in Fig. 2(c), we provide the configuration of
add–drop (de)multiplexer, as well as the configurations of mode multiplexer and mode demultiplexer.

3. Performance Analysis
To evaluate performance of this scheme, we use the FMF channel model shown in Fig. 4(a), which
is based on [7]. The FMF is divided into K sections, and the coarse-step modeling method is
adopted, which is a standard technique for modeling the polarization effects in single-mode fibers.
The length of each section should be longer than the fiber correlation length. Ideally, the section
lengths should be randomly distributed, to avoid periodic artifacts in the wavelength domain. In each
section, different modes exhibit different mode-dependent delay. The propagation characteristics of
k th section are given by Mk ð!Þ ¼ Vk k ð!ÞUky , where Uk and Vk are unitary matrices introducing the
random coupling among modes, and k ð!Þ ¼ diag½ej!1 ; ej!2 ; . . . ; ej!D  is a diagonal matrix
describing the uncoupled modal group delays with i being a group delay of the ith mode. The
model represented by function of k th section, i.e., Mk ð!Þ, includes the random coupling only, while
the mode multiplexers/demultiplexers introduce the fixed coupling, responsible for the error floor
phenomenon of uncodes signals. However, this error floor typically occurs for low BER values,
while the threshold BER of employed LDPC codes is significantly higher making the LDPC-coded
mode-multiplexed systems pretty much insensitive to the fixed mode crosstalk introduced by the
mode multiplexer/demultiplexer.
The pilot arrangement for 2-D channel estimation is shown in Fig. 4(b). The preamble is used to
estimate the mode-dependent delay and for SNR and correlation matrix estimation, while the comb-
pilot portion is used to estimate for random coupling. The linear minimum mean-square error
(LMMSE) technique, as shown in [8]–[10], is an efficient approach to estimate the pilot channel
coefficients [8]
 1
^ p; MMSE ¼ RH RH þ ðMÞ
H H^ p; LS ; p ¼ 1; . . . ; Np (1)
p p
SNR

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Fig. 5. BER performance of proposed scheme averaged over all spatial modes and all spectral bands.

^ p; LS
where RH p is the correlation matrix of pilot channel matrix H p , Np is the number of pilots, H
denotes least square (LS) channel matrix estimate, and ðMÞ is modulation type and size depen-
dent parameter, defined as ðMÞ ¼ EfjXk j2 gEf1=jXk j2 g with Xk being the symbol transmitted on
the k th subcarrier. The data channel coefficients are estimated from pilots by interpolation. For
instance, in linear interpolation, the channel estimation for k th subcarrier is given by [9]
  l Nsc Nsc Nsc
^ Þ ¼ Hp ðm þ 1Þ  Hp ðmÞ
Hðk þ Hp ðmÞ; m G k G ð m þ 1Þ ; 0Gl G : (2)
Nsc =Np Np Np Np
The results of Monte Carlo simulations of proposed software-defined LDPC-coded multiband
OFDM scheme for averaged code rate of 0.8 and symbol rate of 36 GS/s, N1 ¼ N2 ¼ N3 ¼ 5, and
for ASE noise dominated scenario are shown in Fig. 5. The numerical results represent the BER
results averaged over all modes and all spectral bands. The aggregate data rate of scheme corre-
sponding to 24-ary constellations is 50.4 Tb/s, as described in previous section. On the other hand,
the aggregated data rate of 16-ary constellations is 2mRRs N1 N2 N3 ¼ 2  4  0:8  36 GS/s  5 
5  5 ¼ 28:8 Tb/s. Clearly, the schemes based on N-dimensional OSCD constellations significantly
outperform the corresponding schemes based on QAM, N-polytopes (in particular 24-cell), and
sphere packing method [11]. Interestingly enough, the scheme based on 24-cell outperforms the
corresponding scheme based on sphere packing (that is optimum when N tends to infinity). For
instance, the scheme based on 24-ary 4-D OSCD outperforms the corresponding scheme based on
24-ary 4-D sphere packing by 0.66 dB at BER of 2  109 . On the other hand, the scheme based on
16-ary 2-D OSCD outperforms the corresponding scheme based on 16-QAM by 1.11 dB at BER of
7:25  108 .

4. Concluding Remarks
Next-generation optical transport networks will be affected by limited bandwidth of information
infrastructure, high energy consumption, and heterogeneity of optical networks. To solve for all
problems simultaneously, in this paper, we have described an adaptive software-defined LDPC-
coded multiband GOFDM spatial-MIMO scheme, which provides fine granularity and elastic ap-
proach to bandwidth utilization. The modulation has been based on multidimensional signaling to
improve the tolerance to fiber nonlinearities and imperfect compensation of channel impairments.
The proposed scheme employs hybrid degrees of freedom such as amplitude, phase, frequency,
polarization, and spatial modes.
In proposed scheme, the GOFDM supper-carriers (composed of multiple mutually orthogonal
GOFDM bands) and GOFDM subcarrier (within single GOFDM band) create a spectral component.

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The adaptive coding has been performed by partial reconfiguration of corresponding parity-check
matrix. To provide fine granularity of data rates, we have proposed the use of signal constellation
sizes not being the power of two. To improve tolerance to imperfectly compensated mode coupling
and PMD, the parent constellation has been decomposed into several subconstellations, and each
subconstellation has been allocated to a different mode. The proposed scheme represents a
beyond-10-Tb/s optical transport enabling technology. This scheme is well aligned with current
optical communication trends, as it can be seen from numerous papers related to spatial division
multiplexing [12]–[17].

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