Steepest-descent method-based adaptive frequency domain equalizer in coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with quadrature phase shift keying modulation

An adaptive frequency domain equalizer (A-FDE) in quadrature phase shift keying-coherent optical-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (QPSK-CO-OFDM) system is proposed in this paper. A-FDE uses steepest descent method to search the optimal equalization parameters. And through applying the adaptive control factor (ACF) to monitor the state of A-FDE, the interference from phase noise (PN) and chromatic dispersion (CD) can be mitigated. The numerical simulation shows that the performance of A-FDE has a remarkable improvement on combating PN and CD comparing with the conventional decision-directed equalizer (DDE). And the A-FDE can achieve the forward-error-correction (FEC) threshold in noisier scenario. Furthermore, because the calculation of ACF only bases on valid data instead of pilot symbols (PSs), A-FDE has low PS overhead merit.