CLEO 2023 Post-Deadline Paper

May 2023: Only a small number of post-deadline submissions are accepted for presentation by a panel of experts at the CLEO 2023, and those papers represent the latest groundbreaking technical achievements in the field of optical communications.
"Optical Arbitrary Waveform Generation and Measurement (OAWG/OAWM) Enabling 320 GBd 32QAM Transmission" written by PhD candidate at the IPQ Daniel Drayß was one of them.

Researchers at the IPQ were able to demonstrate an optical frequency comb-based optical arbitrary waveform generation (OAWG) at a record-high bandwidth of 325 GHz by phase-stabilized superimposing of four tributary signals. In a proof-of-concept experiment, the OAWG system was used to generate 32QAM data signals at a record-high symbol rate of 320 GBd, which were transmitted over an 87 km single mode fiber and received by an optical arbitrary waveform measurement (OAWM) system, reaching constellation signal-to-noise ratios (CSNR) of 18.2 dB. The concepts of OAWG and OAWM rely on multiplexing parallel DAC and ADC arrays in the optical domain, which render the achievable symbol rates of high-fidelity signal generation and measurement independent of the bandwidth of the individual electronic interfaces, thus paving a path towards ultra-broadband optoelectronic test-and-measurement equipment.