FEC in optical communications - A tutorial overview on the evolution of architectures and the future prospects of outband and inband FEC for optical communications

The recent establishment of the 10/40 Gbps technology in DWDM optical links heralds a new era of bandwidth abundance, in response to an explosive growth of services provided through the Internet. Forward error correction (FEC) is one of the key-enabling elements in this long-awaited achievement. Borrowed from the wireless world, FEC was initially introduced in wavelength-division multiplex (WDM) optical-systems to combat amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), a form of noise native in optical amplifiers (OAs). These first generation FEC systems have been associated with a coding-gain of approximately 6 dB. However, as transmission rates gradually scaled towards 10 Gbps, other optical-impairments gained in significance, primarily nonlinear (NL) effects but also chromatic-dispersion (CD) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD). FEC turned out to be invaluable in mitigating these impairments as well