Improved forward error correction technology of RS-LDPC cascade code in optical transport network

Abstract

With the continuous development of optical communication and the increase in data transmission volume, optical transport network (OTN) has become the focus of research in next-generation transmission networks. In the process of data transmission, errors caused by noise often occur, resulting in an increase in the bit error rate (BER) and a decrease in the performance of the optical communication system. Therefore, we use forward error correction (FEC) technology in OTN for error control to improve the transmission efficiency of signals in OTN and reduce the BER. Standard FEC technology uses RS(255,239) code. On this basis, since the performance of low density parity check (LDPC) code is close to the Shannon limit, we propose a method of cascading RS code and LDPC code. Applying this improved FEC technology to OTN, the simulation results show that the improved FEC technology has a reduced BER compared with the standard FEC technology. When the BER is at the 10⁻³ level, the performance is improved by about 1.7 dB.