Single Carrier, Single Polarization 168 Gb/s PAM8 over 80 km below HD-FEC for Data Center Interconnects

We demonstrate the first single carrier, single polarization PAM8 Intensity Modulation Direct Detection system delivering 168 Gb/s over 80km of SMF below the Hard-Decision FEC threshold of 3.8×10-3, with a receiver processing relying only on a 3-tap FFE