Future short-reach optical fiber communication links for datacenter and optical access applications would require not only high data rate but also low power/complexity. In this work, by leveraging a home-designed LiNbO3 intensity modulator with high slope-efficiency, we experimentally investigate a low-complexity/power optical pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) link with 300Gb/s data rate excluding FEC overhead and the following detailed merits: (1) at the transmitter side, no digital signal processing or a high-resolution wideband DAC is required, while only CMOS-class driving voltages less than 1 volt is needed; (2) at the receiver side, no optical or electrical amplifier is needed. It is found that for C-band 600m transmission, a symbol-spaced decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) with 91 feedforward taps and 1 feedback taps is sufficient to achieve a BER lower than the threshold of a low-power practical FEC. With these features, we expect that the overall system has low power consumption. A bitrate-distance product of >180Gb/s*km in C-band is achieved experimentally.
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