Experimental Study of Burst-Mode Reception in a 1300 km Deployed Fiber Link

We experimentally demonstrate burst-mode reception in a 1300 km fiber link that spans from Montreal to Quebec City and back, with a 1.25 Gb/s burst-mode receiver (BMRx). The receiver features automatic phase acquisition using a clock phase aligner (CPA) and provides instantaneous (0 preamble bit) phase acquisition with error-free operation [packet-loss ratio (PLR) <10^-6 and bit error rate (BER) <10^-10] for any phase step (±2¿ rad) between consecutive packets, while also supporting more than 1100 consecutive identical digits (CIDs). The CPA makes use of a phase picking algorithm and an oversampling semi-blind clock and data recovery circuit operated at 2× the bit rate. We also study the effect of channel impairments on the performance of BMRx at such distances. More specifically, we investigate the PLR performance of the system and quantify it as a function of the phase step between consecutive packets, received signal power, CID immunity, and BER, while assessing the trade-offs in preamble length, power penalty, and pattern correlator error resistance.