Electronic Post-compensation for Nonlinear Phase Fluctuations in a 1000-km 20-Gbit/s Optical Quadrature Phase-shift Keying Transmission System Using

the Digital Coherent Receiver

Kazuro Kikuchi
Department of Frontier Informatics, University of Tokyo 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8561, Japan kikuchi@ginjo.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstract: We demonstrate electronic post-compensation for nonlinear phase fluctuation in a 1000-km 20-Gbit/s optical quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) transmission system, where group-velocity dispersion is well managed. The inter-symbol interference (ISI) at the transmitter induces the nonlinear phase fluctuation through self-phase modulation (SPM) of the signal transmitted through a fiber. However, when the optimized phase shift proportional to the intensity fluctuation is given to the complex amplitude of the signal electric field by using a digital coherent receiver, the nonlinear phase fluctuation can be reduced effectively.
2008 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (060.1660) Coherent communications; (060.4370) Nonlinear optics, fibers.

References and links

1. 2. C. Xu, X. Liu, and X. Wei, Differential phase-shift keying for high spectral efficiency optical transmissions, IEEE J. Select. Topics Quantum Electron. 10, 281-293 (2004). A. H. Gnauck and P. J. Winzer, Optical phase-shift-keyed transmission, J. Lightwave Technol. 23, 115-130 (2005). T. Mizuochi, K. Ishida, T. Kobayashi, J. Abe, K. Kinjo, K. Motoshima, and K. Kasahara, A comparative study of DPSK and OOK WDM transmission over transoceanic distances and their performance degradations due to nonlinear phase noise, J. Lightwave Technol. 21, 1933-1943 (2003). J.P. Gordon and L.F. Mollenauer, Phase noise in photonic communications systems using linear amplifiers, Opt. Lett. 15, 1351-1353 (1990). X. Liu, X.Wei, R. Slusher, and C.J. McKinstrie, Improving transmission performance in differential phaseshift-keyed systems by use of lumped nonlinear phase-shift compensation, Opt. Lett. 27, 1616-1618 (2002). C. Xu and X. Liu, Postnonlinearity compensation with data-driven phase modulators in phase-shift keying transmission, Opt. Lett. 27, 1619-1621 (2002) K. Kikuchi, Phase-diversity homodyne detection of multilevel optical modulation with digital carrier phase estimation, IEEE J. Selected Topics on Quantum Electron. 12, 563-570 (2006). K.-P. Ho and J. M. Kahn, Electronic compensation technique to mitigate nonlinear phase noise, J. Lightwave Technol. 22, 779-783 (2004). D.-S. Ly-Gagnon, S. Tsukamoto, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, Coherent detection of optical quadrature phaseshift keying signals with carrier phase estimation, J. Lightwave Technol. 24, 12-21 (2006). G. P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics, 3rd Ed. (Academic, New York, 2001). C. Lorattanasane and K. Kikuchi, Design theory of long-distance optical transmission systems using midway optical phase conjugation, IEEE J. Lightwave Technol. 15, 948-955 (1997). X. Wang, K. Kikuchi, and Y. Takushima, Analysis of dispersion-managed optical fiber transmission system using non-return-to-zero pulse format and performance restriction from third-order dispersion, IEICE Trans. on Electron. E82-C, 1407-1413 (1999).

3.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

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Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

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13.

S. Shimotsu, S. Oikawa, T. Saitou, N. Mitsugi, K. Kubodera, T. Kawanishi, and M. Izutsu, Single side-band modulation performance of a LiNbO3 integrated modulator consisting of four-phase modulator waveguides, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 13, 364-366 (2001).

1. Introduction The phase-shift keying (PSK) modulation format offers many advantages for long-haul optical transmission over the conventional on-off keying format [1][2]. However, the performance of optical PSK transmission systems is limited by nonlinear phase fluctuations [3]. Although the intensity waveform of the return-to-zero (RZ) PSK signal is a regular RZ pulse train, the intensity fluctuation may be caused by the inter-symbol interference (ISI) on the modulated signal when a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) is employed for PSK modulation [2]. In addition, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) generates the intensity fluctuation of the transmitted RZ PSK signal [4]. Such intensity fluctuations of the transmitted signal are converted to the phase fluctuation through self-phase modulation (SPM) due to Kerr nonlinearity of the fiber for transmission, resulting in bit errorrate (BER) degradation. However, since these nonlinear phase fluctuations are correlated with the received intensity fluctuation, they can partially be compensated for by imposing a reverse phase shift proportional to the intensity fluctuation on the complex amplitude of the electric field of the transmitted signal [5][6][7][8]. In this paper, we examine the origin of the nonlinear phase fluctuation for a 20-Gbit/s optical quadrature PSK (QPSK) signal, which is transmitted through a 1074-km dispersionmanaged link, and find that the inter-symbol interference (ISI) at the transmitter is the dominant cause of the nonlinear phase fluctuation. Next, we demonstrate the electronic postcompensation for the nonlinear phase fluctuation using the digital coherent receiver [9]. The optimized phase shift proportional to the intensity fluctuation is given to the complex amplitude of the signal in the electrical domain, leading to effective reduction of the nonlinear phase fluctuation. 2. Compensation for nonlinear phase fluctuation due to inter-symbol interference The optical signal propagation through a fiber along the z direction is generally described by the nonlinear Schrdinger equation [10] as

p (z) j A 2 A A + 2 ( z ) 2 j ( z ) | A |2 A . = z T 2 2

(1)

In this equation, A( z, T ) represents the complex amplitude of the signal electric field on exp( jcT ) , where c is the angular frequency of the carrier, p the loss coefficient, 2 the group-velocity dispersion (GVD) parameter, and the nonlinearity coefficient. The time
T in the moving frame is defined as T = t z /vg , where vg is the group velocity. At the

receiving end, the digital coherent receiver can measure A( L, T ) , where L denotes the transmission distance. The measured complex amplitude will be distorted due to fiber dispersion and nonlinearity. Since Eq.(1) is generally valid, its complex-conjugate form shown below is also valid.

p (z) j A 2 A =+ j ( z ) | A |2 A . A + 2 ( z) z T 2 2 2

(2)

Equation (2) describes the signal back-propagating through the fiber where the sign of p is reversed. The back-propagating signal is the phase-conjugated replica of the forwardpropagating signal at every point along the fiber. This fact means that if we virtually let the measured output complex amplitude A( L, T ) propagate backwardly through the fiber where
#86883 - $15.00 USD Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

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21 January 2008 / Vol. 16, No. 2 / OPTICS EXPRESS 890

the sign of p is reversed, we can compensate for dispersive and nonlinear effects and restore the input complex amplitude A(0, T ) by numerical calculations at the receiver. This principle of operation is the same as that of the midway optical phase conjugation (OPC) scheme [11]. Such calculation is performed by the split-step Fourier method; however, this restoration process may not be practical for the real-time operation of the digital coherent receiver due to the long computation time required when the number of segments for calculations is too large. In this paper, we focus on a dispersion-managed link [12], where a normal GVD fiber is concatenated with an anomalous GVD fiber in each span so that the local GVD is nonzero but the total GVD is zero. The span loss is compensated for by an EDFA in each span. The increase in the local GVD reduces the nonlinear effect, while it makes the transmission spectral window narrower; therefore, the dispersion map should be optimally designed by compromising these two factors. In a well-designed dispersion-managed link, the relatively large local GVD and the moderate optical power diminish the nonlinear effect, and hence the one-step calculation without segmenting the link is still effective for mitigation of the nonlinear effect. In such a case, Eq.(2) shows that the nonlinear effect is cancelled by using
Ac (t ) = A( L, t ) exp jm( )eff | A( L, t ) |2 .

(3)

In this equation, m is the number of spans and ( )eff the effective phase rotation in a span length defined as

( )eff =

( z ) exp( p ( z ))dz.

(4)

We use t instead of T at the receiver, ignoring the delay time L /vg , and we assume that an EDFA in front of the receiver restores the received power to the power launched on each span. In a real transmission system, the power fluctuation is induced by the inter-symbol interference (ISI) at the transmitter ( z = 0 ) using a MZM. Equation (3) means that the initial ISI generates the nonlinear phase shift while traveling through the link, but that such nonlinear phase shift is cancelled at z = L by knowing the output power fluctuation. Therefore, Eq.(3) is valid as far as the intensity waveform is almost maintained along the link. However, this condition is not always satisfied because the local GVD generates ISI along the path, which in turn interacts with fiber nonlinearity. In such a case, the correlation between the intensity and phase fluctuations is not necessarily perfect, and Eq.(3) should be modified as
Ac (t ) = A( L, t ) exp j m( )eff | A( L, t ) |2 .

(5)

In this equation, shows the correlation degree ranging from 0 to 1, which is dependent on the dispersion map of the link. In the experiment shown in Sec.5, is used as an adjustable parameter, and the optimized value is confirmed by extensive computer simulations. 3. Compensation for nonlinear phase noise Another type of nonlinear impairments is the Gordon-Mollenauer effect [3]. In a multi-span transmission system, each amplifier generates amplified spontaneous emission (ASE). Considering an m -span configuration, the intensity fluctuation I ( t ) at the receiver is the sum of all amplifiers contributions as

where A0 denotes the constant envelope and ak ( t ) the in-phase ASE noise from the k -th amplifier counting backwards from the receiver. The amount of the intensity noise is given as its variance as
#86883 - $15.00 USD Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

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k =1

I ( t ) = 2 A0

ak ( t ) ,

(6)

21 January 2008 / Vol. 16, No. 2 / OPTICS EXPRESS 891

 I 2 = 4 A02 ma 2 ,
2

(7)

where a 2 = ak ( t ) (k = 1, ---, m) . On the other hand, the intensity noise is converted to the phase noise by SPM while the signal propagates through the amplifier chain, and the received phase noise can be written as

Equation (8) yields the phase noise variance

Since I ( t ) and ( t ) are partially correlated as shown by Eqs.(6) and (8), by applying a reverse phase shift proportional to the received intensity noise, the nonlinear phase noise is partially compensated for. The compensated phase noise is given as

where is an adjustable parameter. The variance of the compensated phase noise results in

which can be minimized by choosing = 1/ 2 when m

=
2 c

( )eff I 2 m3 12

Comparing 2 (Eq.(9)) with c2 (Eq.(12)), we can see that the nonlinear phase noise is reduced by 6 dB by optimal compensation [6][10]. It is evident that such nonlinear phase noise compensation can be performed by the same equation as Eq.(5) where we can fix at 1/2. 4. Digital coherent receiver A homodyne phase-diversity receiver used in our experiment is shown in Fig. 1 [9]. The combination of the / 4 waveplate and the polarization beam splitter (PBS) creates the 90 optical hybrid necessary for phase diversity. The polarization of the local oscillator (LO) is aligned such that it becomes circular after passing through the / 4 waveplate. On the other hand, the signal is linearly polarized, and the polarization angle is 45 with respect to principle axes of PBSs. The receiver is composed of free-space optical components packaged in a small metal case. All the input and output ports are fiber-pigtailed. We represent the complex amplitude of the beat between the signal and LO as A(t ) A0 exp[ j ( s (t ) + n (t ))] , where A0 denotes the signal amplitude, s the M-ary phase modulation (= 2 m/M , m = M / 2 + 1, , 0, , M / 2) , and n the phase noise from both of the signal and LO. Balanced photodiodes PD1 and PD2 measure the real and imaginary parts of A(t ) , respectively. Next, analog-to-digital converters sample outputs from PD1 and PD2

#86883 - $15.00 USD

Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

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21 January 2008 / Vol. 16, No. 2 / OPTICS EXPRESS 892

c2 = 2 A0 ( ) eff a 2

m k =1

( k m )

c ( t ) = ( t ) + m( )eff I ( t ) = 2 A0 ( )eff

= 2 A0 ( )eff a

m 2

k =1

m k =1

( k m ) ak ( t ) ,

1 as

2 A0 ( )eff a 2 m3

k =1

( t ) = 2 A0 ( )eff

kak ( t ) .

(8)

( )eff I 2 m3

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

simultaneously at a sample rate larger than 2 /T , where T represents the symbol interval. The data are resampled to keep one sample/symbol according to the extracted clock. Thus, we have the digitized complex amplitude A(iT ) , where i denotes the sample number. We consider a system where the data composed of M symbols are differentially precoded at the transmitter. To retrieve the phase modulation s (iT ) , we must evaluate the carrier phase n (iT ) . The procedure to estimate n (iT ) is shown in Fig.2. We take the M -th power of A(iT ) , because the phase modulation is removed from A(iT ) M . Averaging A(iT ) M over (2k + 1) samples from t = (k + i )T to (k + 1)T constitutes a phase estimate at t = iT the phase estimate from the measured phase of each symbol. The phase modulation is then discriminated among M symbols. The restored symbols are finally differentially decoded.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the phase diversity homodyne receiver. PBS: polarization beam splitter, HWP: half-wave plate, QWP: quarter-wave plate, HM: half mirror, LO: local oscillator, PD: double-balanced photodiode.

A ( iT ) = A0 exp j { s ( iT ) + n ( iT )}
..

5. Experimental setup for QPSK transmission system Figure 2 shows the setup for the 20-Gbit/s RZ QPSK transmission experiment. A LiNbO3 IQ MZM [13] was used to form the 20-Gbit/s QPSK signal from precoded two 10-Gsymbol/s data streams with 27-1 pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS). 10-Gsymbol/s electrical signals were band-limited by 7.5-GHz electrical filters. A pulse carver converted the signal to
#86883 - $15.00 USD Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

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as e (iT ) = arg[

k j = k

A( jT )M ]/M . The phase modulation is first determined by subtracting

Coll. LO Coll. QWP Coll. PBS Incoming Signal Coll. HM Coll. PBS Coll. PD2 PD1

IPD1

IPD2

s (iT )

arg()

Symbol
Decoding

= s ( iT ) + n ( iT )
Phase estimation

()M

arg()

e = n ( iT )

AM = A0M exp[ jM n ( iT )]
Fig. 2. Digital phase estimation process for M-ary PSK signals.

21 January 2008 / Vol. 16, No. 2 / OPTICS EXPRESS 893

the return-to-zero (RZ) format with a 50 % duty ratio. The 3-dB spectral width of the distributed feedback (DFB) semiconductor laser used as the transmitter was 150 kHz. The RZ QPSK signal was then transmitted through a 1074-km link in a 26 span configuration. Each span consisted of a 28-km-long large-core SMF and a 12-km-long inverse dispersion fiber (IDF). The GVD value, loss coefficient, and nonlinear coefficient of the SMF were 21 ps/nm/km, 0.2 dB/km, and 0.8 /W/km, respectively. Those of the IDF were -50 ps/nm/km, 0.3 dB/km, and 3.0 /W/km, respectively. A 0.98-m forward-pumped erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) compensated for the span loss of 11dB including the splice loss of 1.8 dB. In the final span, a 74-km-long SMF was used for residual dispersion compensation. A homodyne phase-diversity receiver described in Sec.4 was used to restore the complex amplitude of the transmitted signal. The local oscillator (LO) was a semiconductor DFB laser, whose 3-dB spectral width was 150 kHz and output power was 10 dBm. The signal IQ components were sampled and digitized by AD converters at 20 Gsample/s. The stored data were processed offline as follows: Digital signal processing (DSP) circuits performed compensation for the nonlinear phase fluctuation by using Eq.(5) before carrier phase estimation with the averaging span k = 10 . Symbols were then discriminated among four phase states and the number of bit errors was counted.

PPG DFB LD IQ mod Pulse carver

SMF(28km) +DCF(12km)

EDFA

A ( iT )

Nonlinear phase fluctuation canceller

Carrier phase estimator

Ac ( iT ) = A ( iT ) exp j m( )eff A ( iT )

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the RZ QPSK transmission system.

6. Experimental results and discussion Figure 4(a) shows the back-to-back intensity waveform of the RZ QPSK signal measured by a sampling oscilloscope with an 80-GHz bandwidth. The power launched on each span is 0 dBm. We find that ISI is generated by the bandwidth limitation of the transmitter. On the other hand, Fig. 4(b) shows the intensity waveform of the RZ pulse train without QPSK modulation after transmitted through the 1000-km link. The power fluctuation is mainly induced by ASE accumulation in this case. Comparing Fig. 3(a) with Fig. 3(b), we conclude that the initial ISI is more influential in causing nonlinear impairments than the ASE accumulation in the present transmission system.

#86883 - $15.00 USD

Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

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21 January 2008 / Vol. 16, No. 2 / OPTICS EXPRESS 894

10GHz clock

40km

25
SMF(74km)

Pin

EDFA

Pin

Digital coherent receiver

Symbol
Decoder

Intensity waveform of RZ-QPSK signal

Intensity waveform of RZ pulse train

(a) Back-to-back

(b) After 1000-km transmission

Fig. 4. Comparison of the intensity waveform between the back-to-back RZ QPSK signal (a) and the RZ pulse train after 1000-km transmission.

Figure 5 shows the measured bit-error rate as a function of the compensation parameter when the average power at the fiber input in each span is 0 dBm. The minimum BER is obtained by adjusting 1/ 2 .
1-

Fig. 5. Bit-error rate measured as a function of the compensation parameter .

The upper row in Fig. 6 shows constellation maps measured at the uncompensated state (A in Fig. 5), the optimally compensated state (B), the overcompensated state (C), and the undercompensated state (D). The distribution of the phase fluctuation is narrowed owing to the effective compensation in the optimal compensation (B), leading to a significantly improved BER. To verify the experimental results, we conducted the computer simulation. The initial ISI was created by filtering the complex amplitude of the RZ QPSK signal with an ideal Gaussian filter with a 3-dB bandwidth of 10 GHz. The noise figure of amplifiers was assumed to be 5 dB. Other parameters of fibers for transmission are given in Sec.4. The split-step Fourier method was used to solve the nonlinear Schrdinger equation. The lower row in Fig. 6 shows constellation maps corresponding to the states A, B, C, and D. The agreement between
#86883 - $15.00 USD Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

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21 January 2008 / Vol. 16, No. 2 / OPTICS EXPRESS 895

5.2 5.2

2 2

re emarap no asnepmoC re ttemarap noii ttasnepmoC

5.1 5.1

1 1

5.0 5.0

0 0

5.0 5.0 -

11-

2-

3-

4-

5-

6-

01 01

D Pin=0dBm C

Bii t 01 e r r o r e e r r 01 a 01 a t t
01 01 01

experimental and simulation results is very good. We thus find that the initial ISI generates the nonlinear phase fluctuation, which is partially cancelled out by the post electronic compensation scheme with the digital coherent receiver. The imperfect correlation of = 1/ 2 between the received intensity fluctuation and the nonlinear phase fluctuation stems from ISI caused along the link in addition to the initial ISI.

Uncompensated

Optimally compensated

Overcompensated

Under-compensated

A(=0)

B (=0.5)

C (=1.8)

D (=-0.9)

Fig. 6. Constellation maps of the transmitted RZ QPSK signal at the uncompensated state (A in Fig. 5), the optimally compensated state (B), the overcompensated state (C), and the under-compensated state (D). The upper row shows the measured results and the lower row shows the simulation results.

7. Conclusion We have demonstrated electronic post-compensation for nonlinear phase fluctuation of a 20Gbit/s optical quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signal transmitted through a 1000-km dispersion-managed link. The intensity fluctuation is caused by the inter-symbol interference on the RZ QPSK signal at the transmitter. Such intensity fluctuation is then converted to the phase fluctuation through self-phase modulation (SPM) along the dispersion-managed link, resulting in bit error-rate (BER) degradation. Since the nonlinear phase fluctuation is correlated with the received intensity fluctuation, it can be compensated for by imposing a reverse phase shift proportional to the intensity fluctuation on the complex amplitude of the signal electric field. The optimized phase shift is given to the complex amplitude by using a digital coherent receiver, leading to effective reduction of the nonlinear phase fluctuation.

#86883 - $15.00 USD

Received 27 Aug 2007; revised 22 Oct 2007; accepted 30 Oct 2007; published 9 Jan 2008

(C) 2008 OSA

21 January 2008 / Vol. 16, No. 2 / OPTICS EXPRESS 896

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