Carrier assisted differential detection with a generalized transfer function

Abstract

Direct detection capable of optical field recovery not only enables high-order modulation for high spectral efficiency (SE) but also extends the transmission reach by digital compensation of linear channel impairments such as chromatic dispersion. Recently, to bridge the gap between direct detection and coherent detection, carrier assisted differential detection (CADD) has been proposed for the reception of complex-valued double-sideband signals. In this paper, we extend the concept CADD to a general selection of the transfer functions, beyond the originally-proposed delay interferometer. To validate the proposed CADD approach, we utilize an optical filter based on silicon photonics microrin..