We experimentally investigate the performance of WDM coherent polarization-division multiplexed-return to zero-quadrature phase shift keying (PDM-RZ-QPSK) network in nonlinear transport regimes. Seven, 28 or 32-Gbaud PDM-RZ- QPSK channels are employed on a 50-GHz grid and transmitted over 1600-km fiber on an all-EDFA recirculating loop without any dispersion compensation module (DCM). The transmission link is configured entirely of either standard single-mode fiber (AllWave), medium dispersion fiber (TrueWave REACH), or ultra-large area fiber (ULAF). We sweep the launch power of the center channel and side channels together to measure the nonlinear effects of self-phase modulation (SPM), cross-phase modulation (XPM), and cross-polarization modulation (XPolM) on the center channel's BER performance. Furthermore, for all link configurations, we employ three different carrier phase recovery methods in the demodulation routine - Viterbi-Viterbi, Viterbi-Viterbi with a minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) filter, and the Optametra/Tektronix Weiner filter - to ascertain their relative performance in the presence of nonlinear effects.

Date Published: 24 January 2012
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8284, Next-Generation Optical Communication: Components, Sub-Systems, and Systems, 82840B (24 January 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.909907

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8284:
Next-Generation Optical Communication: Components, Sub-Systems, and Systems
Guifang Li; Dieter Stefan Jäger, Editor(s)