Volterra predistorter for the dynamic nonlinearity of LED

Abstract

In this Letter, we propose the application of a Volterra predistorter to compensate for the second-order nonlinear distortion generated in light-emitting diode (LED) communication systems. We demonstrate that a predistorter dedicated specifically to the LED has linear (not quadratic) numerical processing complexity. Experimental investigation performed using pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) indicates that it achieves similar performance as the classical Volterra equalizer located at the receiver. The highest measured gain in electrical signal to noise and interference power ratio of predistortion over linear equalization was at 300 Mbaud and was approximately 3.5 dB. At the same baud rate, the unpredistorted signal had a received optical power penalty of up to 2.5 dBm compared with the predistorted signal.