title: Performance evaluation of coherent WDM PS-QPSK (HEXA) accounting for non-linear fiber propagation effects.
abstract: Coherent-detection (CoD) permits to fully exploit the four-dimensional (4D) signal space consisting of the in-phase and quadrature components of the two fiber polarizations. A well-known and successful format exploiting such 4D space is Polarization-multiplexed QPSK (PM-QPSK). Recently, new signal constellations specifically designed and optimized in 4D space have been proposed, among which polarization-switched QPSK (PS-QPSK), consisting of a 8-point constellation at the vertices of a 4D polychoron called hexadecachoron. We call it HEXA because of its geometrical features and to avoid acronym mix-up with PM-QPSK, as well as with other similar acronyms. In this paper we investigate the performance of HEXA in direct comparison with PM-QPSK, addressing non-linear propagation over realistic links made up of 20 spans of either standard single mode fiber (SSMF) or non-zero dispersion-shifted fiber (NZDSF). We show that HEXA not only confirms its theoretical sensitivity advantage over PM-QPSK in back-to-back, but also shows a greater resilience to non-linear effects, allowing for substantially increased span loss margins. As a consequence, HEXA appears as an interesting option for dual-format transceivers capable to switch on-the-fly between PM-QPSK and HEXA when channel propagation degrades. It also appears as a possible direct competitor of PM-QPSK, especially over NZDSF fiber and uncompensated links.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Elettronica, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24-10129 Torino, Italy.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Poggiolini
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bosco
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Carena
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Curri
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Forghieri
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008027:Light; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D055100:Optical Fibers; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013685:Telecommunications / Q000295:instrumentation*