SQNR Improvement Enabled by Nonuniform DAC Output Levels for IM-DD OFDM Systems

We propose and demonstrate via both simulation and experiment a scheme for a low-bit resolution digital-to-analog convertor (DAC) to improve the signal-to-quantification noise ratio (SQNR) of an intensity-modulated direct-detection (IM-DD) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal. In this scheme, the discrete output levels of a DAC are nonuniform and properly assigned based on the distribution of the OFDM signal. Such nonuniformity allows a better exploitation of output levels for the OFDM signal so that low-level waveforms that appear much more frequently experience mitigated quantization noise. To calculate these optimized output levels with the distribution of an OFDM signal, a numerical algorithm is proposed and verified. Our proposed scheme is proven effective in the simulations for Gaussian-distributed signals and brings over 3.6-dB and ∼2.5-dB improvements on SQNR and receiver sensitivity, respectively. The feasibility is also verified by a proof-of-concept experiment with ∼7.4-Gbps quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK)-modulated OFDM signals output by a 3-bit DAC. Our scheme enables transmission of such signals with no further optimization with ∼−25-dBm receiver sensitivity, while it is impossible using a conventional way. Both simulation and experimental results validate our scheme as a promising way to be implemented in low-bit resolution DACs for IM-DD OFDM applications.