Spatially Coupled Codes and Optical Fiber Communications: An Ideal Match?

In this paper, we discuss the class of spatially coupled codes with respect to their applicability for long-haul and submarine optical communication systems. We first show how to optimize irregular spatially coupled LDPC codes for their use in optical communications with limited decoding hardware complexity and then present simulation results with an FPGAbased decoder where we show that very low error rates can be achieved and that conventional block-based LDPC codes can be outperformed. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the combination of spatially coupled LDPC codes with different demodulators and detectors, important for future systems with adaptive modulation and for varying channel characteristics. We demonstrate that SC codes can be employed as universal, channel-agnostic coding schemes.