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Forward Error Correction (FEC) A Primer On The Essential Element For Optical Transmission Interoperability

The document discusses forward error correction (FEC), which is an important technique for improving transmission reliability in optical networks. It has become essential for high-speed optical transmission. FEC works by adding redundant parity bits to allow errors to be detected and corrected. Standards organizations define the specific FEC encoding and decoding rules to ensure interoperability between transmitters and receivers. Common FEC schemes and their performance are summarized for various data rates.

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353 views4 pages

Forward Error Correction (FEC) A Primer On The Essential Element For Optical Transmission Interoperability

The document discusses forward error correction (FEC), which is an important technique for improving transmission reliability in optical networks. It has become essential for high-speed optical transmission. FEC works by adding redundant parity bits to allow errors to be detected and corrected. Standards organizations define the specific FEC encoding and decoding rules to ensure interoperability between transmitters and receivers. Common FEC schemes and their performance are summarized for various data rates.

Uploaded by

Lambertchao
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Forward Error Correction (FEC): A Primer on

the Essential Element for Optical Transmission


Interoperability
Forward error correction (FEC) has been a powerful tool in the cable
industry for many years. In fact, perhaps the single biggest performance
improvement in the DOCSIS 3.1 specifications was achieved by
changing the FEC being used in previous versions – Reed-Soloman
(RS) – to a new coding scheme with improved performance: low-density
parity check (LDPC). Similarly, FEC has also become an indispensable
element for high-speed optical transmission systems, especially in
current coherent optical transmission age.

FEC is an effective digital signal processing method that improves the


bit error rate of communication links by adding redundant information
(parity bits) to the data at the transmitter side so that the receiver side
then uses the redundant information to detect and correct errors that
may have been introduced in the transmission link. As the following
figure shows, the signal encoding that takes place at the transmitter has
to be properly decoded by the receiver in order to extract the original
signal information. Precise definition and implementation of the
encoding rules are required to avoid misinterpretation of the information
by the receiver decoding the signal. Successful interoperability will only
take place when both the transmitter and receiver follow and implement
the same encoding and decoding rules.
As you can see, FEC is the essential element that needs to be defined
to enable the development of interoperable transceivers using optical
technology over point-to-point links. The industry trends are currently
moving toward removing proprietary aspects and becoming
interoperable when the operators advocate more open and
disaggregated transport in high-volume short-reach applications.

When considering which FEC to choose for a new specification, you


need to consider some key metrics, including the following:

 Coding overhead rate— The ratio of the number of redundant bits to


information bits

 Net coding gain (NCG)— The improvement of received optical


sensitivity with and without using FEC associated with increasing bit
rate

 Pre-FEC BER threshold— A predefined threshold for error-free


post-FEC transmission determined by NCG
Other considerations include hardware complexity, latency, and power
consumption.

One major decision point for FEC coding and decoding is between
Hard-Decision FEC (HD-FEC) and Soft-Decision FEC (SD-FEC). HD-
FEC performs decisions whether 1s or 0s have occurred based on
exact thresholds, whereas SD-FEC makes decisions based on
probabilities that a 1 or 0 has occurred. SD-FEC can provide higher
NCG to get closer to the ideal Shannon limit with the sacrifice of higher
complexity and more power consumption.

The first-generation FEC code, standardized for optical communication,


is RS code. RS is used for long-haul optical transmission as defined by
ITU-T G.709 and G.975 recommendations. In this RS implementation,
each codeword contains 255 code word bytes, of which 239 bytes are
data and 16 bytes are parity, usually expressed as RS (255,239) with
the name of Generic FEC (GFEC). Several FEC coding schemes were
recommended in ITU-T G. 975.1 for high bit-rate dense wavelength
division multiplexing (DWDM) submarine systems in the second-
generation of FEC codes. The common mechanism for increased NCG
was the use of concatenated coding schemes with iterative hard-
decision decoding. The most commonly-implemented example is the
Enhanced FEC (EFEC) from G.975.1 Clause I.4 for 10G and 40G
optical interfaces.

At the 100 Gbps data rate, CableLabs has adopted Hard-Decision (HD)
Staircase FEC, defined in ITU-T G.709.2 and included in the CableLabs
P2P Coherent Optics Physical Layer v1.0 (PHYv1.0) Specification. This
Staircase FEC, also known as high-gain FEC (HG-FEC), is the first
coherent FEC that provides an NCG of 9.38 dB with the pre-FEC BER
of 4.5E-3. The 100G line-side interoperability has been verified in the
very first CableLabs’ Point-to-Point (P2P) Coherent Optics
Interoperability Event.
At the 200 Gbps data rate, openFEC (oFEC) was selected in CableLabs
most-recent release of P2P Coherent Optics PHYv2.0 Specification.
The oFEC provides an NCG of 11.1 dB for Quadrature Phase-Shift
Keying (QPSK) with pre-FEC BER of 2E-2 and 11.6 dB for 16QAM
format after 3 soft-decision iterations to cover multiple use cases. This
oFEC was also standardized by Open ROADM targeting metro
applications.
Although CableLabs has not specified 400G coherent optical transport,
the Optical Interworking Forum (OIF) has adopted a 400G concatenated
FEC (cFEC) with soft-decision inner Hamming code and hard-decision
outer Staircase code in its 400G ZR standard; this same FEC has been
selected as a baseline proposal in the IEEE 802.3ct Task Force. This
400G implementation agreement (IA) provides an NCG of 10.8 dB and
pre-FEC BER of 1.22E-2 for coherent dual-polarized 16QAM
modulation format specially for the Data Center Interconnection (DCI).
The following table summarizes performance metrics for standardized
FEC in optical fiber transmission systems.

CableLabs is the first specification organization to demonstrate 100G


coherent optics interoperability with a significant level of participants.
Please register for our next coherent optics interoperability testing

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