5B1-1 2012 17th Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference (OECC 2012) Technical Digest
July 2012, Busan, Korea

Mitigation of Intra-channel Nonlinear Distortions
based on PAPR Reduction with CD Pre-compensation
in Real-time 50Gbps PM-QPSK Transmission
Shinsuke FUJISAWA, Daisaku OGASAHARA, Emmanuel LE TAILLANDIER DE GABORY, Toshiharu ITO,
and Kiyoshi FUKUCHI
NEC Corporation, 1753 Shimonumabe, Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan
s-fujisawa@ak.jp.nec.com
Abstract
We verified the correlation between PAPR and intra-
channel nonlinear distortions with 50.7Gbps PM-QPSK
signal over 1,310km dispersion non-managed transmission.
Experimental results with 50% CD pre-compensation
exhibited minimal PAPR and improved Q factor.
I. INTRODUCTION
Optical coherent detection and digital signal
processing (DSP) offer the capability to receive multi-
level signals such as Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
(QPSK) [1] and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
(QAM) [2], as well as versatile and powerful
compensation of degradations caused by linear effects
such as chromatic dispersion (CD), polarization mode
dispersion (PMD) and even optical nonlinear phenomena
to some extent. Lumped compensation of a large amount
of CD by DSP at a receiver [3] enables to use
transmission lines without inline optical dispersion
compensation fiber (DCF), namely CD non-managed
lines. Not only are these lines simple, more easily
deployed and cost-effective, but also they enable to
reduce optical nonlinear impairments induced by cross
phase modulation (XPM), since a large amount of
accumulated CD reduces the correlation among optical
channels. Although, the removal of DCF reduces intra-
channel nonlinear impairments such as self phase
modulation (SPM) and cross polarization modulation
(XPolM), they still remain limiting factors, as they are
enhanced by increasing the occurrence frequency and the
amplitude of peaks in the signal waveform due to the
large CD accumulation.
In this paper, we propose to use the integral of Peak to
Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of an optical signal as a
figure of merit in a system design of CD non-managed
links. We experimentally evaluated the correlation
between the integral of PAPR and transmission
characteristics with a 50.7Gbps PM-QPSK signal over a
1,310km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) transmission.
We obtained improvements by minimizing the integral of
PAPR with half of the CD compensation at a transmitter.
II. MITIGATION OF INTRA-CHANNEL NONLINEAR
IMPAIRMENTS BY PAPR REDUCTION
In the case of a CD non-managed line, a large amount
of CD accumulates rapidly with transmission distance. As
a consequence, rapid changes of optical waveforms
This work is partly supported by the National Institute of
Information and Communications Technology (NICT), JAPAN.
978-1-4673-0978-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
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contribute to the time averaging effect of the phase noise
caused by optical nonlinear phenomena, reducing the
inter-channel distortions they induce. In such conditions,
peaks caused by CD on optical waveforms are remaining
factors of nonlinear phase noise. Thus, the reduction of
PAPR of the optical signal offers a way to reduce
nonlinear distortions. CD pre-compensation is a simple
method to control the PAPR of the optical signal.
Figure 1 shows simulation results of PAPR changes
for 50.0Gbps PM-QPSK signals over a 1,600km SSMF
line, with 80km long spans, for three configurations: CD
totally compensated at the receiver, CD totally
compensated at the transmitter, and CD evenly
compensated at the transmitter and at the receiver. It can
be foreseen from Fig. 1 that the range where PAPR is
moderate is the widest for the case where half of CD is
compensated at the transmitter and the remaining half is
compensated at the receiver. Besides, PAPR tends to
saturate for the absolute values of CD corresponding to
accumulation over more than 500km SSMF transmission.
100% at TX
100% at RX
50% at TX and 50% at RX
Fig. 1. Dependency of PAPR on the CD compensation scheme
To quantify the PAPR of an optical signal, we propose
the integral of PAPR over distance and we use it as a
figure of merit for transmission characteristics. We
calculated the integrals and Q factors as a function of the
ratio between the CD pre-compensation over the total CD
compensation of both the transmitter and the receiver, for
the same signals as Fig. 1 for 1,600km transmission.
(a) (b)
normalized integral of PAPR [dB]
Q factor [dB]
Ration of pre-dispersion over total CD Ration of pre-dispersion over total CD
Fig. 2. Correlation between the integral of PAPR and the Q factors
Figure 2a shows the integral of PAPR over distance
normalized by the total transmission distance. Figure 2b
shows Q factors calculated from Bit Error Ratio (BER).
439

The span input power was set to 0dBm to work in
conditions where nonlinear phenomena are major limiting
factors. From Fig. 2, we confirm the strong correlation
between the integral of PAPR and the Q factors. The
maximum Q factor is achieved for the case where CD is
evenly compensated at the transmitter and the receiver.
III. E XPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
We experimentally verified the simulation results with
the setup of Fig. 3. The transmitter generates a 50.7Gbps
PM-NRZ-QPSK signal with two modulators driven by
four differentially encoded PRBS31 patterns at
12.67Gbps, including soft decision forward error
correction (SD-FEC) overhead. Optical CD pre-
compensation is performed with chirped FBG modules,
which do not induce optical nonlinear degradations. The
transmission line consists of 16 spans of SSMF, which
lengths are approximately 80km. The total transmission
distance is 1,310km and the total accumulated CD is
+21,900ps/nm. The receiver consists of an optical
coherent front end and a real-time DSP circuit, including
an FDE-based CD compensation circuit. Following DSP
steps include polarization demultiplexing and adaptive
equalization, carrier phase estimation, symbol decision,
differential decoding and SD-FEC decoding.
SSMF 80km x 16 spans
50.7Gbps
CDC
PM-NRZ-QPSK
transmitter module
1558.98nm
1,310km
Fig. 3. Experimental setup
First, we studied the case without CD pre-
compensation for reference. We measured BER after 8-
span (660km) and 16-span (1,310km) transmissions for
several span input powers. Results are plotted on Fig. 4
with Q factors calculated from the measured BER. The
optimal span input power is between -4dBm and -2dBm.
Above these powers, intra-channel nonlinear distortions
are dominant factors of degradation.
Q factor [dB]
SSMF Input Power [dBm]
Fig. 4. Transmission characteristics without CD pre-compensation
Next, we added optical CD pre-compensation at the
transmitter and measured BER after 660km and 1,310km
transmissions. We evaluated transmission characteristics
for two values of CD pre-compensation, namely
-6,000ps/nm and -10,000ps/nm. These configurations
enable to achieve the minimal values of the integral of
PAPR over the transmission line for 700km and 1,200km
transmission distance respectively.
Figure 5 shows Q factors calculated from the measured
978-1-4673-0978-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: BEIJING UNIVERSITY OF POST AND TELECOM. Downloaded on April 01,2021 at 01:56:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2012 17th Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference (OECC 2012) Technical Digest
July 2012, Busan, Korea
BER after 660km and 1,310km transmission respectively.
In the case of 660km transmission, the optimal Q factor is
16.9dB for an optimal span input power set between
-2dBm and 0dBm. The improvement of Q factors in the
optimal condition is 0.2dB. In the nonlinear regime above
2dBm, the degradation caused by intra-channel nonlinear
distortions is reduced when CD is compensated at the
transmitter. At span input power of 2dBm, for
-6,000ps/nm and -10,000ps/nm, the improvements of Q
factors are 1.4dB and 1.0dB respectively. This result
supports the simulation results that the nonlinear
degradations are substantially reduced for conditions
where the integral of the PAPR over the transmission
distance is minimal. The improved stability of Q factors
over high span input power offers wider operation
window due to high tolerance for variation of the
received OSNR among optical channels.
In the case of 1,310km transmission, CD pre-
compensation improved the Q factor by 0.5dB at -2dBm.
In the nonlinear regime, the improvement of Q factors
was 2.2dB at 2dBm for CD pre-compensation of
-10,000ps/nm, while the improvement was limited to
1.0dB for CD pre-compensation of -6,000ps/nm. Again,
this result supports the simulation results
CD Comp. at TX
䧎/䧊 0ps/nm
䦟/䦠 -6,000ps/nm
䦱/䦲 -10,000ps/nm
tunable 50.7Gbps
660km
Q factor [dB]
optical PM-NRZ-QPSK
filter receiver
featuring a real-
time DSP circuit
1,310km
SSMF input power [dBm]
Fig. 5. Transmission characteristics with CD pre-compensation
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
We experimentally demonstrated the strong correlation
between the integral of PAPR and transmission
characteristics with a 50.7Gbps PM-QPSK signal over a
1,310km SSMF-only transmission line. We obtained an
improvement of the Q factor by minimizing the integral
of PAPR with half of the CD pre-compensation at a
transmitter. This indicates the validity of the integral of
PAPR as a figure of merit for CD non-managed lines,
where intra-channel nonlinear distortions are dominant.
R EFERENCES
[1] D. Ogasahara et al., “Real-time Evaluation of Optical
Nonlinear Effects on 112Gbps PM-QPSK Signal in
Dispersion Managed Links”, OFC2011, paper OMR3
[2] M. Maeda et al., “Hardware-efficient Polarization
Demultiplexing for QAM Signal Based on Dual Stage
Decision-Directed Algorithm’, OFC 2012, paper OM2H.7
[3] M. Arikawa et al., “WDM Transmission of 127Gb/s PM-
QPSK Signal over 3,350km SMF-only Line with
Chromatic Dispersion Compensation using Real-Time
DSP-LSI”, OFC2012, paper NTh1I.4
[4] V. Curri et al., “Dispersion Compensation and Mitigation
of Nonlinear Effects in 111-Gb/s WDM Coherent PM-
QPSK Systems”, IEEE Phot. Tech. Lett. 20, 1473 (2008)
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