Software-defined optical OFDM transmission systems: Enabling elasticity in the data plane

Optical OFDM is arising as one of the most promising technology for designing bit rate and bandwidth variable transponders as key enablers of future elastic, flexible and spectral efficient optical networks. In this paper, a cost-effective bit rate variable O-OFDM system using low complexity DSP with PAPR reduction capabilities is presented. It allows to flexibly reconfigure/adapt the data rate with fine granularity at the DSP level, enhancing the power efficiency and receiver sensitivity of the DD system. O-OFDM using phase modulation and coherent detection is also proposed as suitable spectral efficient solution, robust against system nonlinearities, for software-defined transmission in elastic networks.