Transceiver design with coherent and direct detection for datacenter application
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Date
2025-06-23
Authors
Τσαγκαράκης, Απόστολος
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Abstract
80% of global internet data traffic occurs within datacenters. As a result of the increasing demand for higher capacity and lower latency, it is necessary to upgrade the interconnects within datacenters (up to 2 km of optical fiber), between datacenters (up to 10 km of optical fiber), as well as interconnections between groups of datacenters located within a specific geographical area (typically 100 km of optical fiber or more). Direct detection, which is currently the most widely deployed technique for such links, must be replaced by coherent detection to meet the capacity and performance requirements of these applications. Based on these three types of interconnections, we analyze the efficiency and performance
of coherent versus direct detection in terms of maximum capacity and maximum fiber reach, while maintaining a target Bit Error Rate at 2 × 10⁻⁴. To achieve this, we first modeled both direct and coherent detection systems in MATLAB, conducting a thorough analysis of the noise sources affecting each architecture, as well as modeling the operation and noise characteristics of a DFB laser. Finally, we compared the two architectures in terms of performance and identified the
appropriate role each can play across different scenarios.
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Keywords
Optical communications, Coherent detection, Direct detection, Self-coherent transceivers