Laser Linewidth Tolerance for 16-QAM Coherent Optical Systems Using QPSK Partitioning

Abstract

The laser linewidth tolerance for 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) coherent optical systems is investigated using a quaternary phase-shift-keying (QPSK) partition scheme. The different stages needed to partition the square-16-QAM into QPSK constellations for carrier phase estimation are discussed. It is shown that at 1 dB above sensitivity at a bit-error rate of 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> , a combined linewidths symbol duration product of 1 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-4</sup> is tolerable. The performance of the algorithm with different bits resolution in the analog-to-digital converter is also presented.