Low-Complexity and Highly-Robust Chromatic Dispersion Estimation for Faster-than-Nyquist Coherent Optical Systems

Faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) coherent optical transmission technology is considered to be an outstanding solution to achieve higher spectral efficiency (SE), larger capacity, and greater achievable transmission by using advanced modulation formats in concert with highly efficient digital signal processing (DSP) to estimate and compensate various impairments. However, severe inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by tight FTN pulse shaping will lead to intractable chromatic dispersion (CD) estimation problems, as existing conventional methods are completely ineffective or exhibit unaffordable computational complexity (CC). In this paper, we propose a low-complexity and highly robust scheme that could realize accurate and reliable CD estimation (CDE) based on a designed training sequence (TS) in the first stage and an optimized fractional Fourier transform (FrFT) in the second stage. The training sequence with the designed structure helps us to estimate CD roughly but reliably, and it further facilitates the FrFT in the second stage to achieve accurate CDE within a narrowed searching range; it thereby results in very low CC. Comprehensive simulation results of triple-carrier 64-GBaud FTN dual-polarization 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-16QAM) systems demonstrate that, with only overall 3% computational complexity compared with conventional blind CDE methods, the proposed scheme exhibits a CDE accuracy better than 65 ps/nm even under an acceleration factor as low as 0.85. In addition, 60-GBaud FTN DP quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK)/16QAM transmission experiments are carried out, and the results show that the CDE error is less than 70 ps/nm. The advantages of the proposed scheme make it a preferable candidate for CDE in practical FTN coherent optical systems.