Digital Signal Processing and Spectrally Efficient Modulation for Short-Range Fiber-Optic and Fiber-Wireless Millimeter-Wave Links

In this thesis several digital signal processing (DSP) techniques and advanced modulation formats are investigated as means of increasing the capacity and spectral efficiency of fiber-optic links and hybrid fiber-wireless millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications systems. Enabled by the fast development of electronics, DSP has become one of the most prospective solutions to enhance the capacity and performance of current communications systems. Currently, the essential devices that allow high-speed DSP are at an advance stage, namely digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), with sampling rates reaching several thousands of millions samples per second (GSa/s). However, to take advantage of these high-speed devices for real-time applications, the digital processing units are required to cope with these speeds, e.g. low-power consumption high-speed arithmetic logic units (ALUs). The further research and development of faster mixed-signal transceiver drivers and high-speed digital processing units have a fundamental role in the next generation of high capacity optical communications systems. This work is devoted to experimentally validate the flexibility and additional degrees of freedom provided by DSP to fiber-optic and photonics-enabled mmWave communications systems, while achieving record data rate transmissions and expanding the state-of-the-art.