PRESS RELEASE: ZTE Corporation has announced that its research paper, on the latest research result in optical networking (ON), titled Real Time FPGA Investigation of Probabilistic Shaping 16QAM with HiDM and OFEC, was selected by the Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exhibition (OFC) 2021 with a top score, among the top 10% of all selected papers.

This is the sixth consecutive year ZTE’s ON research paper has been selected by the OFC. This paper verifies a low-complexity solution that uses Probabilistic Shaping (PS) and interoperable OFEC based on the industry-leading SD-FEC technology to improve the optical transmission performance.

The PS has drawn wide-spread attention in recent years. The low-complexity PS with HiDM and OFEC proposed by ZTE increases the probability of inner constellation points and reduces the probability of outer constellation points, by changing the probability distribution of the transmission signals. It increases the minimum Euclidean Distance between the constellation points when the average power is fixed, so as to enhance the transmission performance.

At the same time, the interoperable OFEC is used at the line side based on the industry-leading SD-FEC to achieve low complexity and high net coding gain. As one of the important technologies for Beyond 100G DSP chipset, the PS can increase the Optical Signal Noise Ratio (OSNR) of the chipset, and enables its application in various interconnected scenarios, thereby significantly strengthening its competitiveness. This research result will be applied in ZTE’s next-generation in-house DSP chipset.

With the large-scale deployments of 5G networks and the development of the vertical industry applications, optical networks are facing bigger challenges in transmission performance. How to improve the transmission performance, strengthen the operators’ competitiveness and guarantee 5G user experience while deploying large-capacity ONs has been one of the most important research directions of operators and equipment providers in the optical communications field.

The Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exhibition (OFC) is globally acknowledged as the largest and highest-level international meeting in the optical communications field. Every year, the authors of groundbreaking cutting-edge papers are invited to the OFC for communication, to share the latest research results in optical communications and promote ON technology development.