Phase Noise Tolerant Modulation Formats and DSP

Algorithms for Coherent Optical Systems

JAIME RODRIGO NAVARRO

Doctoral Thesis in Physics

School of Engineering Sciences
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden
June 2017
TRITA-FYS 2017:30 KTH Royal Institute of Technology
ISSN 0280-316X School of Engineering Sciences
ISRN KTH/FYS/--17:30—SE SE-164 40 Stockholm
ISBN: 978-91-7729-424-5 SWEDEN

Akademisk avhandling som med tillstånd av Kungl Tekniska Högskolan framlägges till offentlig
granskning för avläggande av teknologie doktorsexamen i fysik fredagen den 9 juni 2017 klockan
10.00, i Sal C, Electrum, Kungl Tekniska Högskolan Kistagågen 16, Kista.

© Jaime Rodrigo Navarro, June 2017

Tryck: Universitetsservice US-AB
 iii

Abstract

Coherent detection together with multilevel modulation formats has the potential to significantly
increase the capacity of existing optical communication systems at no extra cost in signal bandwidth.
However, these modulation formats are more susceptible to the impact of different noise sources and
distortions as the distance between its constellation points in the complex plane reduces with the
modulation index. In this context, digital signal processing (DSP) plays a key role as it allows
compensating for the impairments occurring during signal generation, transmission and/or detection
relaxing the complexity of the overall system. The transition towards pluggable optical transceivers,
offers flexibility for network design/upgrade but sets strict requirements on the power consumption
of the DSP thus limiting its complexity. The DSP module complexity however, scales with the
modulation order and, in this scenario, low complex yet high performance DSP algorithms are highly
desired.
In this thesis, we mainly focus on the impact of laser phase noise arising from the transmitter and
local oscillator (LO) lasers in coherent optical communication systems employing high order
modulation formats. In these systems, the phase noise of the transmitting and LO lasers translate into
phase noise in the received constellation impeding the proper recovery of the transmitted data. In
order to increase the system phase noise tolerance, we firstly explore the possibility of re-arranging
the constellation points in a circularly shaped mQAM (C-mQAM) constellation shape to exploit its
inherent phase noise tolerance. Different low-complex carrier phase recovery (CPR) schemes
applicable to these constellations are proposed along with a discussion on its performance and
implementation complexity. Secondly, the design guidelines of high performance and low complex
CPR schemes for conventional square mQAM constellations are presented. We identify the inherent
limitation of the state-of-the-art blind phase search (BPS) carrier phase recovery algorithm which
hinders its achievable performance and implementation complexity and present a low complex
solution to overcome it. The design guidelines of multi-stage CPR schemes for high order modulation
formats, where the BPS algorithm is employed at any of the stages, are also provided and discussed.
Finally, the interplay between the received dispersed signal and the LO phase noise is analytically
investigated to characterize the origin of the equalization enhanced phase noise phenomena.
iv

Sammanfattning

Koherent detektion tillsammans med multinivå-modulationsformat kan avsevärt öka kapaciteten hos
befintliga optiska kommunikationssystem utan ökning av signalbandbredden. Dessa
modulationsformat är emellertid mer mottagliga för brus och distorsion, eftersom avståndet mellan
konstellationspunkterna i det komplexa planet minskar med ordningen på modulationsformatet. I
detta sammanhang spelar digital signalbehandling (DSP) en nyckelroll eftersom det möjliggör
kompensering för de störningar som uppstår under signalgenerering, överföring och / eller
detektering, vilket minskar kraven på systemet som helhet. Övergången till pluggbara optiska
transceivers, erbjuder flexibilitet för nätverksdesign / uppgradering, men ställer strikta krav på DSP-
strömförbrukningen, vilket begränsar DSP-algoritmernas möjliga komplexitet. Därför är DSP-
algoritmer för högre ordningens modulationsformat med låg komplexitet men hög prestanda mycket
önskvärda.
I denna avhandling fokuserar vi främst på effekten av det fasbrus som kommer från både sändarlasern
och lokaloscillator-lasern (LO) i koherenta optiska kommunikationssystem som använder högre
ordningens modulationsformat. I dessa system orsakar fasbruset från sändnings- och LO-lasrarna,
fasbrus i den mottagna konstellationen vilket förhindrar att den sända datan korrekt återskapas på
mottagarsidan. För att öka systemets fasbrusstolerans undersöker vi, för det första möjligheten att
rearrangera konstellationspunkterna i en cirkulärformad mQAM (C-mQAM) konstellationsform för
att utnyttja dess inneboende fasbrustolerans. Olika metoder föreslås för fasåtervinning (CPR) för
dessa konstellationer och deras komplexitet och prestanda diskuteras. För det andra presenteras
designregler för högpresterande CPR-system med låg komplexitet för konventionella kvadratiska
mQAM-konstellationer. En inneboende begränsning hos fasåtervinningsalgoritmen Blind Phase
Search (BPS) identifieras vilken begränsar prestandan och ökar implementeringskomplexiteten. En
enkel lösning för att övervinna denna begränsning presenteras. Konstruktionsriktlinjer för flerstegs
CPR-system för högre ordningens modulationsformat, där BPS-algoritmen används i något av stegen,
presenteras och diskuteras. Slutligen undersöks analytiskt samspelet mellan den mottagna signalen
som utsatts för fiberns dispersion och LO-fasbruset för att karakterisera orsaken till det fenomen som
kallas Equalization Enhanced Phase Noise.
Acknowledgments
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to all people who contributed to
this very key moment. I start by thanking my supervisors; Prof. Sergei Popov for his indispensable
guidance and kind help during this journey and for making the process an easy-going task. Prof.
Gunnar Jacobsen for his trust, invaluable guidance and for having the honor of sharing his broad
experience and knowledge which were crucial to the achievements I accomplished. Dr. Richard
Schatz for his enthusiasm, kind help and for sharing his priceless technical knowledge essential to
solve the most difficult obstacles I faced during my PhD studies. Dr. Xiaodan Pang, for his patience
while providing me with the smoothest possible starting process. His profound technical knowledge
was essential and his joyful character made my PhD studies a pleasant journey. Dr. Oskars Ozolins
for keeping me steadily focused. His technical expertise and his strive for excel were essential to
accomplish my achievements. Anders Berntson and the Kista High Speed Transmission Laboratory
team members for giving me the opportunity to develop myself in such an enriching working
atmosphere. I continue thanking Assoc. Prof. Darko Zibar for hosting me and supervising my
research during my stay in DTU. Hadrien Louchet and Andre Richter for their pleasant supervision
while hosting my stay at VPIphotonics.
I continue thanking my office mate and friend Aditya Kakkar for the most productive collaboration
crucial to the achievements made during my PhD studies. Dr. Aleksejs Udalcovs for his kind help,
technical discussions and joyful moments. My colleagues Elena, Sebastian and Miguel from KTH,
Francesco, Molly and Edson from DTU, my friends from ICONE, Ksenia, Auro, Asif, Simone,
Giuseppe, Francesca, Tu, Marti, Faruk, Hugo, Hou-Man as well as the project management members.
I would also like to thank my friends in Stockholm for making my stay here an unforgettable
experience. Not to forget mentioning my life friends from UPV and their support, Thanks.
Y para terminar, quiero dar las gracias al grupo mas importante de todos, mi familia. Especialmente
mi madre Amparo Navarro Puchades, mi padre Jaime Rodrigo Gonzalvo y mi hermana Amparo
Rodrigo Navarro a quienes le debo todo. A pesar de la distancia, su apoyo y amor incondicional han
sido clave para mantenemre firme durante todo este tiempo y conseguir todo lo que me proponga.
Tanto por los que estan como los que ya no, sin vosotros nada de esto hubiese sido remotamente
posible. Muchísimas gracias.

v
Contents
Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... v
Contents ....................................................................................................................................... vii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... ix
List of Tables................................................................................................................................. xi
List of Abbreviations................................................................................................................... xii
List of Publications ..................................................................................................................... xv
Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1
1.1 Historical Background........................................................................................................ 1
1.1.1 History of Traditional Direct-Detection Optical Communications ......................... 1
1.1.2 Coherent Optical Communications ......................................................................... 3
1.2 Phase Noise in Coherent Optical Systems ......................................................................... 4
1.3 Overview of the Thesis Contribution ................................................................................. 5
Chapter 2 Coherent Optical Fiber Communication Systems ................................................... 7
2.1 Transmitter ......................................................................................................................... 7
2.1.1 Modulation Formats ................................................................................................ 7
2.1.2 Pulse Shaping Filter ................................................................................................ 9
2.1.3 Dual-nested IQ Mach-Zehnder modulator (IQ MZM) ......................................... 10
2.1.4 Laser sources ......................................................................................................... 10
2.2 Optical Fiber Channel .......................................................................................................11
2.2.1 Attenuation in Optical Fibers ................................................................................ 12
2.2.2 Fiber Dispersion .................................................................................................... 13
2.2.3 Polarization Mode Dispersion............................................................................... 14
2.3 Coherent Optical Receiver ............................................................................................... 15
2.3.1 Analog-to-Digital Converters ............................................................................... 16
2.4 Digital Signal Processing ................................................................................................. 16
2.4.1 De-Skew and Orthonormalization ........................................................................ 17
2.4.2 Static Channel Equalization .................................................................................. 17
2.4.3 Interpolation and Timing Recovery ...................................................................... 17
2.4.4 Dynamic Channel Equalization ............................................................................ 18
2.4.5 Frequency Offset Compensation........................................................................... 19
2.4.6 Carrier Phase Recovery......................................................................................... 20
2.4.7 Symbol Estimation and Decoding ........................................................................ 20
Chapter 3 CPR Schemes for Phase Noise Tolerant Circular mQAM Formats .................. 21
3.1 Phase Noise Tolerant C-mQAM....................................................................................... 21
3.2 Adaptive Boundaries for Cycle slip Mitigation ............................................................... 25
3.3 n-PSK Partitioning algorithm for C-mQAM.................................................................... 26
3.4 Two Stage n-PSK Partitioning CPR Scheme for C-mQAM ............................................ 29
3.4 Experimental validation of the proposed CPR schemes for C-mQAM ........................... 31

vii
viii CONTENTS

Chapter 4 Carrier Phase Recovery Algorithms for Square mQAM ................................... 33

4.1 Efficient blind phase search based carrier phase recovery with angular quantization noise
mitigation ......................................................................................................................... 33
4.2 Multi-stage Carrier Phase Recovery Schemes with Angular Quantization Noise Mitigation
............................................................................................................................. 37
4.2.1 Multi-Stage Carrier Phase Recovery Architecture Design ................................... 37
4.3 Experimental validation of the proposed CPR schemes for Sq-mQAM .......................... 40
Chapter 5 Laser Frequency Noise Impact on Coherent Optical Communications with
Electronic Chromatic Dispersion Compensation ..................................................................... 43
5.1 Equalization enhanced phase noise in dispersion-unmanaged coherent systems employing
lasers with white frequency noise spectrum ..................................................................... 43
5.2 Equalization enhanced phase noise in dispersion-unmanaged coherent systems employing
lasers with general non-white frequency noise spectrum................................................. 48
Chapter 6 Conclusions and Future Research ........................................................................... 51
Chapter 7 Summary of the Original Works ............................................................................. 55
References .................................................................................................................................... 61
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 General structure of a DSP-based optical transmitter ........................................... 8
Figure 2.2 Square 16QAM and circular 16QAM constellations shape .................................. 9
Figure 2.3 Dual-nested Mach-Zender modulator structure .................................................. 10
Figure 2.4 Group delay per unit length. ............................................................................... 14
Figure 2.5 Coherent optical receiver structure with polarization diversity. ......................... 15
Figure 2.6 Ninety degree hybrid transfer function. .............................................................. 15
Figure 2.7 DSP modules in a digital coherent optical receiver. ........................................... 16
Figure 2.8 Adaptive MIMO equalizer structure. .................................................................. 19
Figure 3.1 Viterbi and Viterbi block diagram for CPR. ....................................................... 22
Figure 3.2 Blind phase search block diagram for CPR. ....................................................... 23
Figure 3.3 Circular 16QAM constellation and 64QAM constellations shape .................... 25
Figure 3.4 Block diagram of the proposed adaptive boundaries module ............................. 25
Figure 3.5 OSNR sensitivity penalty versus combined linewidth symbol duration
product for the proposed adaptive boundaries module ....................................... 26
Figure 3.6 Block diagram of the proposed n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme. ..................... 27
Figure 3.7 Distribution of the constellation points in C-16QAM and C-64QAM
constellations along with the proposed bit mapping, differential sector
encoding and symbol amplitude classes. ............................................................ 28
Figure 3.8 OSNR sensitivity penalty versus combined linewidth symbol duration
product comparative for the proposed n-PSK partitioning scheme .................... 28
Figure 3.9 Block diagram of the proposed two-stage n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme...... 30
Figure 3.10 Flow chart diagram of the proposed two-stage n-PSK partitioning CPR
scheme for an optimization of its implementation complexity. .......................... 30
Figure 3.11 OSNR sensitivity penalty versus the combined linewidth symbol duration
product for the proposed two-stage n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme ............... 31
Figure 3.12 Experimental performance comparative of the proposed n-PSK partitioning
CPR scheme. ....................................................................................................... 32
Figure 3.13 Experimental performance comparative between different proposed CPR
schemes. .............................................................................................................. 32

ix
x LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1 FN-PSD of different tracked phases by the C-BPS ............................................ 34

Figure 4.2: Block diagram of the proposed F-BPS CPR scheme. ......................................... 35
Figure 4.3 OSNR sensitivity penalty versus combined linewidth symbol duration
product comparative between the proposed F-BPS and the C-BPSCPR
schemes. .............................................................................................................. 35
Figure 4.4 Tolerable combined linewidth symbol duration product comparative
between the proposed F-BPS and C-BPS CPR schemes. ................................... 36
Figure 4.5 Block diagram of two different multi-stage CPR design architectures. ............. 37
Figure 4.6 Block diagram of different CPR schemes for the second stage in a multi-
stage CPR.. .......................................................................................................... 38
Figure 4.7 OSNR penalty versus tolerable combined linewidth symbol duration
product performance of the proposed multi-stage CPR schemes ....................... 39
Figure 4.8 Tolerable linewidth symbol duration product versus effective number of test
phases performance of the proposed multi-stge CPR schemes. ......................... 40
Figure 4.9 Experimental performance comparative between the proposed F-BPS and
the C-BPS CPR schemes. ................................................................................... 41
Figure 4.10 Experimental validation of the proposed multi-stage CPR schemes. ................. 41
Figure 5.1 General system model of a coherent optical communication system for
EEPN analysis. .................................................................................................... 44
Figure 5.2 Influence of the LO low frequency noise spectrum on the EEPN
phenomenon. ....................................................................................................... 45
Figure 5.3 Experimental validation of the influence of low frequency noise on EEPN. ..... 46
Figure 5.4 Experimental validation of the proposed mitigation bandwidth design
parameter............................................................................................................. 47
Figure 5.5 Qualitative representation of the EEPN phenomenon. ....................................... 48
Figure 5.6 Regime segmentation of the frequency noise spectrum. .................................... 49
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Computational complexity reduction factors relative to the n-PSK
partitioning CPR scheme .................................................................................... 29
Table 3.2 Computational complexity reduction factors relative to the two-stage
n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme. ........................................................................ 31
Table 4.1 Computational complexity reduction factors relative to the C-BPS of
different proposed CPR schemes ........................................................................ 39

xi
List of Abbreviations
AGC Automatic gain control
ASIC Application-specific integrated circuit
AWG Arbitary waveform generator
AWGN Additive white Gaussian noise
BER Bit error ratio
BPS Blind phase search
BPSK Binary phase shift keying
C-BPS Conventional blind phase search
CMA Constant modulus algorithm
C-mQAM Circular m-ary quadrature amplitude modulation
CPR Carrier phase recovery
DAC Digital-to-analogue converter
DDPLL Decision-directed phase-locked loop
DSF Dispersion shifted fiber
DSP Digital signal processing
EDFA Erbium doped fiber amplifier
EEPN Equalization enhanced phase noise
F-BPS Filtered blind phase search
FEC Forward error correction
FFT Fast Fourier transform
FIR Finite impulse response
FSR Free spectral range
FWM Four wave mixing
IMDD Intensity-modulation direct-detection
LED Light-emitting diode
LO Local oscillator
MIMO Multiple-input and multiple-output
MLE Maximum likelihood estimator
MMA Multi-modulus algorithm

xii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xiii

mQAM m-ary quadrature amplitude modulation

MZM Mach-Zehnder modulator
OSNR Optical signal to noise ratio
PBC Polarization beam combiner
PMD Polarization mode dispersion
PSK Phase shift keying
QPSK Quadrature phase shift keying
SER Symbol error ratio
SNR Signal to noise ratio
SSMF Standard single mode fiber
V&V Viterbi and Viterbi
List of Publications

Publications included in this thesis:

Paper I: J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, A. Kakkar, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz, G. Jacobsen,

S. Popov, "Adaptive Boundaries Scheme for Cycle-Slip Mitigation in C-mQAM
Coherent Systems," IEEE PTL, 27(20), 2154-2157 (2015).
Paper II: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz, M. Iglesias
Olmedo, G Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Carrier Phase Recovery Algorithms for
Coherent Optical Circular mQAM Systems,” IEEE/OSA J. Lightwave Technol.
34(11), 2717-2723 (2016).
Paper III: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, M. Iglesias Olmedo, O. Ozolins, F.
Da Ros, M. Piels, R. Schatz, D. Zibar, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Two-Stage n-PSK
Partitioning Carrier Phase Recovery Scheme for Circular mQAM Coherent
Optical Systems,” Photonics. 3(2), 37 (2016).
Paper IV: J. Rodrigo Navarro, M. I. Olmedo, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz,
G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, D. Zibar, “Phase Noise Tolerant Carrier Recovery
Scheme for 28 Gbaud Circular 16QAM”, in Proc. of ECOC 2015 (OSA/IEEE,
2015), paper Mo.4.3.5.
Paper V: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, A. Udalcovs,
S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “Blind phase search with angular quantization noise
mitigation for efficient carrier phase recovery,” MDPI Photonics, to appear.
Paper VI: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, F. Nordwall,
H. Louchet, S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “High Performance and Low Complexity
Carrier Phase Recovery Schemes for 64-QAM Coherent Optical Systems,” in
OFC 2017, (OSA, 2017), paper W2A.53.
Paper VII J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, A. Udalcovs, R. Schatz,
S. Popov, G Jacobsen, “Design of Multi-Stage Carrier Phase Recovery Schemes
for high order Coherent Optical mQAM Systems,” J. Lightwave Technol.,
submitted.
Paper VIII: A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, H. Louchet, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, "Comprehensive Study of Equalization-Enhanced Phase
Noise in Coherent Optical Systems," IEEE/OSA J. Lightwave Technol. 33(23),
4834-4841 (2015).
Paper IX: A. Kakkar, R. Schatz, X. Pang, J. Rodrigo Navarro, H. Louchet, O. Ozolins, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, "Impact of local oscillator frequency noise on coherent
optical systems with electronic dispersion compensation," Opt. Express 23(9),
11221-11226 (2015).
Paper X: A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz, J. Rodrigo Navarro, H. Louchet, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, “A Path to Use Large Linewidth LO in 28 Gbd 16-QAM
Metro Links”, in Proc. of ECOC 2015 (OSA/IEEE, 2015), paper Tu.3.4.6.
Paper XI: A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, H. Louchet, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, "Mitigation of EEPN in Coherent Optical Systems With
Low-Speed Digital Coherence Enhancement," IEEE PTL, 27(18), 1942-1945
(2015).

xv
xvi LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

Paper XII: A. Kakkar, M. Iglesias Olmedo, O. Ozolins, J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, R.

Schatz, H. Louchet, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Overcoming EEPN in Coherent
Transmission Systems”, in Proc. of CLEO 2016 (OSA, 2016), paper SM4F.3.
Paper XIII: A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, H. Louchet, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Equalization Enhanced Phase Noise in Coherent Optical
Systems with Digital Pre- and Post-Processing,” Photonics 3(2), 12 (2016).
Paper XIV: A. Kakkar, O. Ozolins, J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, M. I. Olmedo, R. Schatz,
H. Louchet, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Design of Coherent Optical Systems
Impaired by EEPN”, in Proc. of OFC 2016 (OSA, 2016), paper Tu2A.2.
Paper XV: A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, A. Udalcovs,
H. Louchet, S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “Laser Frequency Noise in Coherent Optical
Systems: Spectral Regimes and Impairments,” Scientific Reports, vol. 7, Art. no.
844 (2017).
Paper XVI: A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, F. Nordwall,
D. Zibar, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Influence of Lasers with Non-White Frequency
Noise on the Design of Coherent Optical Links,” in OFC 2017, (OSA, 2017),
paper Th2A.55.

Publications not included in this thesis:

Paper I: A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz, U. Westergren,

G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Low Complexity Timing Recovery Algorithm for PAM-
8 in High Speed Direct Detection Short Range Links,” in Proc. Of OFC2017
(OSA, 2017), paper W2A.54.
Paper II: S. Popov, A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz,
H. Louchet, G. Jacobsen, “Equalization-Enhanced Phase Noise in Coherent
Optical Communications Systems”, in Proc. of ICTON 2016.
Paper III: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, A. Udalcovs, R. Schatz,
and G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “64-QAM Coherent Optical Systems with
Semiconductor Lasers,” Invited talk at PIERS2017, St Petersburg, Russia, 22nd
– 25th of May, 2017

Paper IV: X. Pang, J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, M. Iglesias Olmedo, O. Ozolins, R.

Schatz, A. Udalcovs, S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “Advanced Modulations and DSP
enabling High-speed Coherent Communication using Large Linewidth Lasers,”
in Proc. of PIERS 2016, p. 1-1.
Paper V: O. Ozolins, M. Iglesias Olmedo, X. Pang, S. Gaiarin, A. Kakkar,
J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Udalcovs, K. M. Engenhardt, T. Asyngier, R. Schatz, J.
Li, F. Nordwall, U. Westergren, D. Zibar, S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “100 GHz EML
for High Speed Optical Interconnect Applications,” IEEE/OSA J. Lightwave
Technol., Invited paper accepted.
Paper VI: X. Pang, O. Ozolins, S. Gaiarin, A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, M. Iglesias
Olmedo, R. Schatz, A. Udalcovs, U. Westergren, D. Zibar, S. Popov G. Jacobsen,
“Experimental Study of 1.55-µm EML-Based Optical IM/DD PAM-4/8 Short
Reach Systems,” IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, accepted
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS xvii

Paper VII: O. Ozolins, X. Pang, M. Iglesias Olmedo, A. Udalcovs, A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo

Navarro, R. Schatz, U. Westergren, S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “High-Speed Optical
and Wireless Transmission – Challenges and Achievements” in Proc. of
RTUWO2016 (IEEE, 2016), p. 1.
Paper VIII: S. Popov, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, M. Iglesias Olmedo, A. Kakkar, S. Gaiarin, A.
Udalcovs, R. Lin, R. Schatz, J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Djupsjöbacka, D. Zibar, J.
Chen, U. Westergren, G. Jacobsen, ” Ultra-Broadband High-Linear Integrated
Transmitter for Low Complexity Optical Interconnect Applications” in Proc. of
ACP2016 (OSA, 2016), p. 1.
Paper IX: O. Ozolins, X. Pang, M. Iglesias Olmedo, A. Kakkar, A. Udalcovs, J. Rodrigo
Navarro, R. Schatz, U. Westergren, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “High-speed Optical
Interconnects with Integrated Externally Modulated Laser,” Invited talk at
ICTON 2017, Girona, Spain, 2nd - 6th of July 2017.
Paper X: A. Marinins, O. Ozolins, X. Pang, A. Udalcovs, J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar,
R. Schatz, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Cylindrical Polymer Optical Waveguides with
Polarization Independent Performance,” in CLEO2017 (OSA, 2017), submitted.
Chapter 1
Introduction

The parallel invention of semiconductor laser diodes together with photo-detectors and the
realization of the first low-loss fiber in 1970 by Corning Glass may be considered as the origin of
a new field, optical telecommunications [1-3]. This new technology had the potential to offer
virtually “infinite” bandwidth compared to earlier coaxial and free-space radio based transmission
systems. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the historical developments of optical
communications from its initial days to the present modern coherent optical communication
systems.

1.1 Historical Background

It was not until 2005 where coherent optical communications regain widespread interest. Up until
then, traditional intensity-modulation direct-detection (IMDD) schemes employed in wavelength-
division multiplexed (WDM) systems along with the development of the erbium-doped amplifier
(EDFA) were the main research focus [1]. We treat the historical developments of traditional
systems and modern coherent communication systems separately in this chapter.

1.1.1 History of Traditional Direct-Detection Optical Communications

The vision that fiber waveguide could be used to transmit laser-light signals corresponds to
C. A. Hockham and C. K. Kao who, later in 2009, was awarded the Nobel Prize for the invention
of fiber optics [3]. In order to trap the light inside the fiber core, a cladding surrounding the core
with slightly lower refractive index was added to produce total internal light reflection. Analytical
studies on graded refractive-index optical waveguides with power-law profiles were proposed in
the late 1960s before the introduction of low-loss fibers [5,6]. However, the challenge remained
finding an appropriate material for making fiber glass. In the 1960s, the attenuation of the best
silica glass was of 1dB per meter at 0.8μm of wavelength which was impractical for transmission.
The elimination of glass impurities led to the historical development of a single mode fiber with

1
2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

20 dB/km of losses [4,7]. Subsequent efforts were made to reduce OH impurity resulting in fiber
losses of 0.2 dB/km at 1.55μm of wavelength [7]. Nowadays, optical fibers have attenuations of ≈
0.16 dB/km over the 1.55μm transmission band.
Along with the development of low-loss fibers, light sources such as lasers and LED’s were the
focus of intensive research for practical implementation of fiber transmission systems [7]. The first
semiconductor laser, made of GaAs, was reported in 1962 followed with the development of
AlGaAs lasers within the next 8 years [8]. These early devices had a short lifetime ranging from
few minutes to few hours and therefore impractical for stable long-term optical communication
systems. Since then, compact and efficient semiconductor laser chips emitting at 1.3 μm and 1.55
μm have been developed with sufficient high efficiency and reliability to compose the basics of
optical communications technology [8].
Fiber losses, however, were still the main problem to transmit information over long distances.
The optical signal had to be electrically regenerated meaning that the optical signals had to be
converted into electrical signals, electronically amplified, converted back into optical and launched
into the fiber in the following fiber span. The invention of the optical fiber amplifier was the key
milestone to overcome this problem. The erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and its
manufacturing challenges were investigated around 1987-1988 in the university of Southampton
and Bell Laboratories [9-11]. The properties of the EDFA had the potential to simultaneously re-
amplify different several signals at different wavelengths without interference between them which
gave rise to the wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) scheme. However, with the demand for
more throughput significantly increasing, the sole utilization of WDM and EDFA rapidly became
insufficient as problems with nonlinearities and chromatic dispersion started to appear in these
schemes. The two existing type of optical fibers in the 1990s could not cope with large-channel-
count WDM at bit rates above 2.5Gb/s [12]. The existing standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) had
a large chromatic dispersion in the 1550 nm band which limited the transmission reach of 10 Gb/s
signals to only 60km. The dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF) was developed precisely to reduce the
chromatic dispersion problems in the 1550nm band. However, this type of fiber turned out to be
more vulnerable to the optical nonlinear effect four-wave mixing (FWM). A new non-zero
dispersion shifted fiber was developed at Bell Labs in 1993 with low enough dispersion to transmit
10Gb/s over hundreds of kilometers but with sufficient dispersion to destroy the phase matching
condition necessary for the FWM phenomena to appear. With 40 Gb/s in the horizon, dispersion
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 3

management and dispersion compensating (DCF) fibers were developed in what we can identify
as the dispersion managed WDM era (1993-2009). During this era, relevant improvements such
as forward error correction (FEC), Raman amplification and polarization multiplexing where also
introduced. By the end of this era commercial systems were available with up to 80 wavelengths
operating each at 40 Gb/s. Eventually, EDFAs ran out of optical bandwidth and “packing” more
data into a given slice of spectrum could only be achieved by employing higher efficient
modulations. The early studies about coherent detection developed in the 1980s were then revived
as the next promising technology to further increase the transmission capacity.

1.1.2 Coherent Optical Communications

It was only after 2000 where coherent technologies attracted a renewal of widespread interest due
to the increase in capacity demand which traditional EDFA+WDM schemes could not cope with.
Higher receiver sensitivity and the possibility to use high spectral efficient modulations are two of
the main advantages of coherent detection. Multilevel modulation formats based on coherent
technologies rapidly became the mainstream research with the quadrature phase shift keying
(QPSK) modulation scheme as the first step [13]. Recent developments of high-speed digital
integrated circuits triggered the possibility of retrieving the “In phase” (I) and “Quadrature” (Q)
signal components from the complex amplitude of an optical carrier by means of processing the
high-speed electrical signals in a DSP core. The demodulation of a 20 Gb/s QPSK using homodyne
detection followed by digital carrier phase estimation in DSP was reported in [14]. Although carrier
phase recovery (CPR) could be achieved with an optical phase locked loop, its intrinsic feedback
delay problem caused the phase recovery to be preferably performed in DSP after homodyne
detection. This type of receiver was then called “digital coherent receiver” having the ability to
employ any type of multi-level modulation format as both the amplitude and the phase of an optical
carrier could be recovered in a stable manner. Owing to the linearity of the IQ demodulation
process, all the information of the transmitted optical signal is preserved after detection and DSP
for transmission impairment mitigation can be performed on the detected electrical signals.
Polarization alignment could also be achieved by its corresponding DSP routine in a polarization-
diversity homodyne receiver.
The achievement of an ASIC-based real-time 46 Gb/s transmission in 2008 is considered a
milestone for modern coherent optical communications [4,15]. The combination of ASIC and DSP
is nowadays leading the path of coherent optical communications enabling features not possible in
4 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

traditional non-coherent systems. Current commercial systems have demonstrated 127 Gb/s
transmission with a 27% overhead for FEC accounting for a total capacity of 8 Tb/s in a WDM
system with a 50 GHz grid interval [16]. These achievements confirm coherent detection together
with DSP as key enablers for the PETA transmission era.

1.2 Phase Noise in Coherent Optical Systems

In order to increase the data rate further, high spectral efficient modulation formats such as 16QAM
or beyond are under extensive research. However, high spectral efficient modulations are more
susceptible to the different impairments and distortions occurring during signal generation,
transmission and reception as its constellation points are more “packed” in the complex plane. The
impairments arising in these systems can be mainly classified into AWGN, fiber non-linearities,
chromatic dispersion, polarization mode dispersion and phase noise related issues. The non-
spectral purity of the lasers employed for signal modulation/demodulation in coherent optical
systems generally translates into phase noise impairment in the detected signal. Thus, considering
that in these modulation formats the data is encoded in the amplitude and phase of an optical carrier,
the mitigation of the phase noise becomes a critical step to properly recover the transmitted data.
Nowadays, research mainly focuses in performing CPR in the electrical domain as part of the DSP
core [17]. CPR schemes can generally be classified into feedforward and feedback architectures.
Feedback CPR structures employs the phase noise estimator of previous symbols to compensate
for the phase noise of current symbols. In feedforward structures, a phase noise estimator is
computed from a block of symbols and is used to compensate for the phase noise of the symbols
within the same block. Owing to the high parallelization and pipelining required in a real ASIC
implementation of the DSP, the feedback delay required in feedback structures limits ultimately
its performance and feedforward architectures are often preferred [18-21]. The Viterbi and Viterbi
(V&V) feedforward algorithm employs the non-linear M-th power operation to remove the
modulation component of M-ary PSK modulated symbols as their angular modulation is uniformly
distributed in the complex plane [22]. However, its scalability to more general m-QAM modulation
formats is not straight forward as, in these cases, the angular modulation component of all
constellation points cannot by directly removed by the M-th power operation. Different schemes
have been proposed to adapt the V&V CPR to 16QAM and 64QAM which are generally based on
the QPSK partitioning approach [23-25]. However, this approach results in a limited phase noise
tolerance as only a small percentage of the constellation points can be used for phase noise
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 5

estimation in high order modulation formats. Recently, the blind phase search (BPS) CPR scheme
has become popular due to its good phase noise tolerance and scalability to high order modulations
[18]. In this approach, the received signal is de-rotated by a number of “test phases”. The test phase
which de-rotates the received signal the closest to the ideal constellation is considered to be the
phase noise estimator. Although this approach has good phase noise tolerance, it comes with the
drawback of a high computational complexity as the required number of test phases drastically
increases with the modulation order. Alternatively, the task of CPR can be performed by inserting
pilot symbols in the received sequence at the cost of reducing the net symbol rate [26,27].
Altogether, CPR is under extensive research and high phase noise tolerant CPR schemes scalable
to high order modulations at low implementation complexity levels are yet to be defined. This task
becomes even more important as the industry transitions towards pluggable coherent transceivers
where power consumption and integration becomes critical.
The possibility to extract the phase information of the received data during coherent detection
enables the compensation of chromatic dispersion in the electrical domain as a part of the DSP
routine. However, under certain conditions of accumulated dispersion and local oscillator phase
noise, it has been reported that the electronic compensation of the dispersion results in an enhanced
noise in both the amplitude and phase domains known as equalization enhanced phase noise [28-
31]. The general consensus for the explanation of this phenomenon lies in the fact that, in these
systems, the phase noise from the LO laser passes directly through the chromatic equalization
module where it gets dispersed. Hence, creating a complex interaction between the received signal
and the dispersed LO laser. Despite the given explanation and all research efforts to characterize
this added noise, many questions still remained unanswered. Furthermore, all studies were
performed based on a statistical view of the phenomenon considering lasers with a white frequency
noise spectrum. However, a thorough analytical investigation of the phenomena employing a more
realistic non-white laser frequency noise spectrum is required.

1.3 Overview of the Thesis Contribution

In this thesis, we contribute in addressing the problems listed in the previous section which can be
divided into:
• High phase noise tolerant and low implementation complexity CPR schemes for high order
modulations.
6 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

• Analytical study of the equalization enhanced phase noise (EEPN) phenomenon for general
non-white laser frequency noise spectrums.
Phase noise compensation for high spectral efficient modulations at low implementation
complexity levels becomes a difficult task due to the lack of suitable CPR schemes for this type of
modulation formats. The first approach provided in this thesis explores the possibility of re-
arranging the constellation points of a conventional square mQAM modulation format in a
circularly shaped mQAM constellation. This constellation inherently provides higher phase noise
tolerance and traditional low-complex algorithms based on the V&V scheme can be directly
applied. The advantages, drawbacks and the performance of different novel proposed CPR
schemes for this kind of modulations are investigated and compared to that of conventional square
mQAM systems. Secondly, we make a thorough investigation of the state-of-the-art BPS algorithm
to reveal the inherent angular quantization noise limitation of the algorithm due to its angle
discretization nature. We demonstrate that, by applying a low pass filtering operation in the BPS
phase noise estimator for quantization noise mitigation, its performance can be improved and its
implementation complexity can be drastically reduced. The outcomes of this work in terms of
performance increase and complexity reduction are considered as an addition to existing research
efforts as we tackle a different unreported problem. All outcomes of this research are validated
experimentally in a 28Gbaud coherent optical transmission system employing up to 64QAM
constellations.
We revise the origin of the EEPN phenomena by performing a thorough analytical study which
reveals that EEPN is mainly caused due to a frequency noise induced symbol jitter. Particularly,
we show that the laser frequency noise spectrum can be divided into different regimes each of
them causing a different set of impairments in the system. In order to possibly mitigate these
impairments, we show that different DSP optimization techniques apply for different spectral
regimes. The proposed EEPN theory is supported by system simulations and validated
experimentally in 28Gbaud coherent optical transmission systems employing up to 64QAM
constellations.
Chapter 2
Coherent Optical Fiber Communication
Systems

The possibility to encode data in the amplitude and phase domains of an optical carrier wave allows
the use of spectrally efficient modulation formats in coherent optical communication systems. In
contrast to traditional IMDD systems, the received signal in coherent communication systems is
mixed with a local oscillator in order to extract the phase information of the received optical carrier.
In this chapter we briefly describe the main modules that model a coherent optical fiber-based
communication system: transmitter, channel and DSP based receiver.

2.1 Transmitter
The transmitter modulates the incoming bit stream into the phase and amplitude of an optical
carrier wave according to a given modulation format. Figure 2.1 shows the general schematic of a
DSP-based optical transmitter employing polarization diversity [32]. The incoming bit stream is
passed to the DSP module where different routines can be applied such as signal pre-distortion/pre-
compensation, Nyquist pulse shaping etc. After the DSP module, the DACs recreate the analog
signals which drive a pair of Mach Zehnder modulators (MZM) according to a given modulation
format. The MZMs modulate the “In phase” and “Quadrature” components of both polarizations
of the transmitting laser carrier wave in a polarization diversity based transmitter. Both
polarizations are then combined in a polarization beam combiner (PBC) resulting in the output
optical signal of the transmitter.

2.1.1 Modulation Formats

In order to transmit the input binary sequence, the optical transmitter encodes the incoming bits
into one or multiple dimensions of the transmitting laser optical carrier wave. High efficient
modulation formats encode information in both the amplitude and phase domains of the carrier

7
8 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

DAC
1 0 1 0 ”X” pol.

DSP
2

Tx PBS 
PBC
Laser 2

”Y” pol.

DAC
Figure 2.1: General structure of a DSP-based optical transmitter

wave. In order to achieve this, the optical transmitter in Figure 2.1 separately modulates the
orthogonal In phase and Quadrature components of the transmitter laser carrier wave. The In
phase and Quadrature components are created by splitting the optical carrier wave and applying a
π/2 phase shift to one of the branches. Then, the amplitude of both components is separately
modulated to generate complex symbols. In order to illustrate the process let the amplitude and
phase modulated of an optical carrier wave be,

xopt t    Ak cos  wt  k  p t  kD  (2.1)

Where Ak and  k represent the amplitude and phase modulation of the k-th symbol respectively
while D and w represent the symbol period and central carrier frequency respectively and p(t)
represents the unity pulse function. Eq. 2.1 can be rewritten in the following form

    
xopt  t     Ak cos  wt   k  p  t  kD     I k cos  wt   Qk cos  wt    p  t  kD 
  2  
(2.2)

Where I and Q represent the In phase and Quadrature components of the optical carrier wave as

I k  Ak cos k  (2.3)

Qk  Ak sin k  (2.4)

Since the In phase and Quadrature components are orthogonal to each other it is therefore
convenient to represent them in a two dimensional plane known as the complex plane. All the
possible I and Q combinations in the complex plane for a given modulation format is known as
 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 9

16 QAM C-16QAM
Quadrature Quadrature

In Phase In Phase

Figure 2.2: Square 16QAM and circular 16QAM constellations in the complex plane

constellation. It is noted that by separately modulating the I and Q components of the optical carrier
wave it is possible to locate any symbol at any point in the complex plane, thus allowing the
possibility to create any constellation shape. Figure 2.2 illustrates the shape of a square 16QAM
and a circular 16QAM constellation.

2.1.2 Pulse Shaping Filter

The use of pulse shaping filters in communications is justified when employing band limited
channels. The main purpose of the pulse shaping filter is to generate band limited signals in order
to accommodate the signals to the channel frequency response and to avoid inter symbol
interference [33,34]. Therefore, it is important to consider the utilization of pulse shaping in the
DSP block of the optical transmitter in Figure 2.1. Generally, the frequency response of a Nyquist
pulse shaping filter can be written as

 1
 T 0 f 
2T

T     1 1
H  f    1  cos   2 fT    1   f  (2.5)
2   2  2T 2T
 0 otherwise



Where T and  are the symbol period and the roll-off factor respectively.
10 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

uI (t)

Ein (t) Eout (t)

V
2
uQ (t)

Figure 2.3:. Dual-nested Mach-Zender modulator structure

2.1.3 Dual-nested IQ Mach-Zehnder modulator (IQ MZM)

Figure 2.3 illustrates the structure of a dual-nested IQ Mach-Zehnder modulator (IQ MZM) as a
part of the optical transmitter shown in Figure 2.1 [4]. The transfer function of the nested IQ MZMs
when biased at minimum transmission points and operating in push pull modes can be defined as

Eout (t) 1   (t)  1   (t) 

 cos  I   j cos  Q  (2.6)
Ein (t) 2  2  2  2 

uI  t  uQ  t 
 I  t    , Q  t    (2.7)
V V

Where V is the voltage required to produce a phase shift of π and uI  t  and uQ  t  are the driving
signals applied to the In phase and Quadrature branches respectively. Therefore, by applying
different driving signals to the In phase and Quadrature branches we can independently change
their amplitudes and create different complex symbols at the output. The MZM must be operating
near the linear region of its transfer function to avoid symbol distortions. If polarization diversity
is employed, this structure is replicated for each of the polarizations as illustrated in the
polarization diversity transmitter of Figure 2.1.

2.1.4 Laser sources

In coherent optical communications the data is encoded in the amplitude and phase of an optical
carrier wave. In these systems, lasers are used as optical sources due to its narrower optical
spectrum as compared to other optical sources such as LEDs. The normalized output of the
transmitting laser can be modeled as
CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 11

xLaser  t   e
j ( wtx (t)  pn (t))
(2.8)

Where wTx and  pn represent the central emitting frequency and the phase noise of the laser

respectively. Generally, phase noise can be modeled as a Wiener process [18]

  k     k  1    k 
pn pn pn
(2.9)

Where  pn  k  is an independent and identically distributed random Gaussian variable with zero
mean and variance [18]

   2  f  T 
2
 pn s
(2.10)

In this formula f corresponds to the linewidth of the signal laser and Ts corresponds to the
symbol period. In this case, the linewidth shape corresponds to a Lorentzian function. The before
mentioned assumptions correspond to a laser with a white frequency noise spectrum generally
considered for modeling coherent optical systems [35,36]. However, a more realistic case
corresponds to a non-white frequency noise spectrum which can be written as [37]

 
10 
9
 int   fR4 
S  f       (2.11)
1
2
f
1
f  1   2    kf R  
2 2

  fR  f     
2 2

  2  

Where  describes the level of 1/f noise at 1 GHz;  int corresponds to the level of intrinsic
1
f

frequency noise at low frequencies; f R is the resonance frequency and the K-factor describes how

the damping rate increases with relaxation frequency. The  parameter determines the carrier
induced frequency noise that gives rise to the noise peak around the resonance frequency.

2.2 Optical Fiber Channel

Attenuation, dispersion, polarization mode dispersion and fiber nonlinearities are the main
impairments impacting the signal during its transmission through the fiber in optical fiber
communication systems. In this section we give a brief description about these impairments for
single mode fibers.
12 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

2.2.1 Attenuation in Optical Fibers

The concept of attenuation in optical fibers relates to the power loss of an optical signal as it travels
through the fiber. In unrepeated optical communication systems, attenuation limits the achievable
transmission distance as the receiver requires a minimum input signal power to produce a given
signal to noise ratio in its output specified by the receiver sensitivity. The relation between the
average power of the propagating signal “P” and the distance traveled “z” can be expressed as

P
  P (2.12)
z

Where  defines the attenuation coefficient. By solving the differential eq. 2.12 we obtain

Pout  Pin e  L (2.13)

Where Pout and Pin represent the output and input signal powers respectively after signal
propagation trough a distance L . Attenuation is often expressed in dB/km

 dB  10  Pout 
    log10    4.343 (2.14)
 km  L  Pin 

The mechanisms leading to fiber attenuation can be classified into extrinsic and intrinsic
mechanisms. The intrinsic mechanisms are related to the material chosen to manufacture the
optical fiber and are unavoidable. The extrinsic mechanisms are due to external factors of the
optical fiber material and could be avoidable. Ultraviolet attenuation, infrared attenuation and
scattering Rayleigh are amongst the intrinsic mechanisms while fiber-impurities such as hydrogen,
OH ions and metallic impurities or fiber curvatures pertain to the extrinsic mechanisms. Ultraviolet
attenuation is caused due to electronic transitions between the valence and conduction bands of
the material that composes the fiber generating a resonance frequency outside the transmission
band but whose tails extend to the transmission band. Infrared attenuation is due to the existence
of intense absorption bands originated by vibrations and oscillations of the structure that compose
the fiber material at those frequencies. Scattering Rayleigh is due to local fluctuations, smaller
than the operating wavelength, of the dielectric constant (refractive index) of the material that
composes the fiber. The presence of impurities in the fiber causes intense absorption bands which
can be mitigated by controlling the amount of impurities in the fiber. Optical fiber curvatures,
forces part of the light to travel a longer distance (external part of the curvature) in the same time
CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 13

in order to maintain the transmitting mode. This is impossible as the light velocity is constant
resulting consequently in light radiation outside the fiber.

2.2.2 Fiber Dispersion

Chromatic dispersion is one of the main impairments affecting the signal as it travels through the
fiber in optical communication systems employing single mode fibers. The different spectral
components that compose the transmitted signal travel at different speed through the fiber causing
signal distortion [38]. In digital optical fiber communications where the information is transmitted
by means of light pulses, chromatic dispersion results in pulse broadening causing inter symbol
interference. In order to mitigate the impact of chromatic dispersion, the signal bandwidth and/or
the transmission reach has to be reduced. Thus, chromatic dispersion limits the transmission reach
and/or the transmission capacity.
There exist two main dispersion mechanisms which can be separately analyzed: Material
dispersion and waveguide dispersion. Material dispersion is caused due to a frequency dependence
of the dielectric constant of the materials that compose the optical fiber. This means that the
materials that compose the core and cladding of a fiber are dispersive materials. It is noted that
material dispersion is independent from whether these materials form a waveguide or not.
Waveguide dispersion is caused due to a frequency dependence of the propagation constant in a
waveguide. By employing the Taylor series expansion of the propagation constant (β(w)) around
the working point w0 we obtain [38]

 1 2 1 3
  w    w     0
  w  w0   w  w   ...
2 3
w w (2.15)
w w 2 w2 6 w3
0 0
0 w0 w0

Therefore, we can define the group delay per unit length as

  w  1
  0  1   2  w  w0    3  w  w0  ...
2
g
(2.16)
L w 2
14 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

 g  w  g  w
L
 1   2  w  w0  a) L
 1 
1
2
 3  w  w0 
2
b)
 g  w  g  w
L L

T T 1
1   2 w   3 w 2
L L 8

w w

w0 w w0 w

Figure 2.4: Group delay per unit length considering β2 a) and β3 b) dispersion terms.

We can observe from eq. 2.16 that the β1 term causes a constant group delay for all frequencies
while the β2 and β3 terms correspond to a linear and quadratic variation of the group delay
respectively with respect to w. Figure 2.4 shows the group delay for the cases where β2 ≠ 0 >> β3
and β2 = 0 .
The dispersion parameters for both cases “D” and “S” can be defined as

2 c  2 c 
2

D  , S   2  3 (2.17)
 2 2
  

Eq. 2.17 allows us to work with  instead of w

1
T  L  D   , T  L  S   2 (2.18)
8

2.2.3 Polarization Mode Dispersion

Polarization mode dispersion is caused due to fiber birefringence. Optical fibers are not perfectly
cylindrical due to tensions and torsions. Moreover, the relative position between core and cladding
might not be constant along the fiber. Therefore, two orthogonal polarizations travel at different
speeds in the fiber as they perceive different refractive indexes due to fiber birefringence. Fiber
birefringence is not constant through the fiber and it randomly changes due to temperature
variations which randomly changes the state of the polarization in the fiber. Polarization mode
dispersion can be defined as

T  PMD L (2.19)

Where PMD and L are the polarization mode dispersion parameter and fiber length respectively.
CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 15

Ix

ADC
90o
Hybrid

DSP Processing
Qx
X-Pol

ADC
Iy
PBS

ADC
o
90
Hybrid
PBS Y-Pol Qy
LO

ADC
Laser

Figure 2.5: Coherent optical receiver structure with polarization diversity.

2.3 Coherent Optical Receiver

A digital coherent optical receiver employing polarization diversity is shown in Figure 2.5. The
coherent optical receiver structure shown in Figure 2.5 is composed of an optical front-end, analog-
to-digital converters and a digital signal processing block. A linearly polarized local oscillator
centered at w0 is used to demodulate the received optical signal. The local oscillator output and the
received signal are firstly split into two “x” and “y” orthogonal polarizations and fed into the
ninety degree hybrids having a transfer function as shown in Figure 2.6 [4]. The outputs of the
ninety degree hybrid fall then into the square-law photodetectors for signal demodulation and the
In phase and Quadrature signal components for each of the polarizations can be recovered [4].
The recovered In phase and Quadrature signal components are then sampled and passed to the
DSP module for further signal processing.

O1
Es I1
O1  1 1  O2
   
O2   1 1 1   I1 
O3  2 1 j   I 2  O3
ELO I2    
O4  1  j  O4

Figure 2.6: Ninety degree hybrid transfer function.

16 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

2.3.1 Analog-to-Digital Converters

The analog-to-digital converters sample the In phase and Quadrature signal components of both
polarizations in a polarization diversity coherent optical receiver. The sampling rate of the ADCs
needs to be high enough in order to preserve all the spectral information for a further post-sampling
DSP according to sampling theory [39]. The received In phase and Quadrature signals must be
sampled at a rate of at least twice the bandwidth of these signals according to the Nyquist theorem
to avoid aliasing. Due to the high data rates used in fiber-optic systems and the difficulty of
manufacturing high-speed sampling ADCs, the ADCs might limit the transmission speed in these
systems [17]. Two important characteristics of an ADC are its bit resolution and its full scale
voltage range (FSR). Quantization noise is added in the sampled signals by the ADCs due to the
limited bit resolution of the ADCs. The FSR parameter refers to the maximum voltage range in
which the signal to be sampled should be contained for a proper sampling. If the signal to be
sampled exceeds the limits given by the FSR parameter it will result in signal clipping. This
problem can be alleviated by using a signal automatic gain control (AGC) in order to maintain the
signal within the limits specified by the FSR parameter.

2.4 Digital Signal Processing

Once the In phase and Quadrature signals are sampled according to the Nyquist theorem, digital
signal processing can be used to mitigate the impairments that have occurred during signal
generation, reception and/or transmission. In this section, we give a brief description of the basic
DSP modules that compose a coherent optical receiver as illustrated in Figure 2.7.

Digital Signal Processing Modules

Interpolation and Timing Recovery

Symbol Estimation and Decoding

De-Skew and Orthonormalization

Frequency Offset Compensation

Dynamic Channel Equalization
Static Channel Equalization

Carrier Phase Estimation

Figure 2.7: DSP modules that compose the DSP processing block in a coherent optical receiver.
CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 17

2.4.1 De-Skew and Orthonormalization

The purpose of the de-skew subsystem is to compensate for path length mismatches between the I
and Q channels in the optical front end and for each of the polarizations [17,40]. Therefore, the de-
skew subsystem synchronizes both I and Q signals in time. As the time mismatch between the
channels might be less than the sampling rate of the ADCs, an interpolator is needed in order to be
able to compensate for time delays lesser than the sampling rate of the ADCs [17,40]. The
orthonormalization algorithm compensates for possible imperfections in the ninety degree hybrids
[17]. The ninety degree phase shift needed in one of the branches of the hybrid might not be
perfectly achieved leading to an orthogonalization problem between its output ports. Two
algorithms are normally employed to compensate for orthogonalization problems in the ninety
degree hybrid based on the Gram-Schmidt and the Löwdin orthogonalization processes. The
Gram-Schimdt takes one received vector as a reference against which all subsequent created
vectors are orthogonalized [41-43]. The Löwdin algorithm creates a set of vectors orthogonal to
each other which are closer to the original vectors in a least-mean squares sense [44,45].

2.4.2 Static Channel Equalization

The recovery of the optical field in coherent detection allows compensating for transmission
impairments such as chromatic dispersion or polarization mode dispersion. The compensation of
chromatic dispersion and time-varying effects such as PMD is conventionally done separately in
the static and dynamic channel equalization modules respectively. This is mainly due to the use of
large static and short adaptive filters for each of the phenomena respectively [17,46,47]. The effect
of chromatic dispersion on the transmitted signal can be compensated by applying the inverse
frequency channel response

H c1 ( w)  e  j z (2.20)

Chromatic dispersion compensation can be performed either in time or frequency domains.

However, it is preferably performed using efficient FIR implementations in frequency domain with,
for instance, the overlap-add method [17,48].

2.4.3 Interpolation and Timing Recovery

After signal static equalization for channel chromatic dispersion compensation, it is possible to
compensate for the differences between the transmitter clock and the sampling rate of the ADCs
18 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

in the coherent receiver. The task of the timing recovery module is to synchronize the receiver
clock with that used in the transmitter in order to produce samples of the received signal with
optimal SNR [17]. Timing recovery can be performed prior to the subsequent DSP algorithms as
shown in Fig 2.7. Some of the implementations of subsequent algorithms use the properties of the
constellation for impairment mitigation assuming therefore, clock synchronization. Commonly,
timing recovery is performed by means of interpolation and timing phase estimation in non-data
aided timing recovery algorithms [49,50]. Assuming the received signal to be sampled at the
Nyquist rate or higher, the task of the interpolator is to generate approximated samples of the
received signal in between the ADCs samples. This can be achieved by means of interpolation by
adding zeros in between the ADC samples followed by a low pas filter. Then, the timing phase
estimator uses these samples to test a cost function in order to decide the optimal sampling point.
Different algorithms employing a diversity of cost functions have been proposed such as Gardner,
Godard, Lee or the CMA algorithms [50-53].

2.4.4 Dynamic Channel Equalization

In this module, time varying impairments such as state of polarization or PMD are compensated
[17]. Fig 2.8 shows an adaptive equalizer structure which may be employed for the correction of
these dynamic effects. The MIMO structure shown in Fig. 2.8 aims to perform the inverse Jones
matrix of the dynamic channel resulting in the pair of outputs [17,54],

xout k   hxxH k  xin k   hxyH k  yin k 

(2.21)
yout k   hyx k  xin k   hyy k  yin k 
H H

In contrast to the static channel equalizer, the number of taps required for this equalizer is typically
less. In order to achieve polarization demultiplexing at the receiver, the constant modulus
algorithm (CMA) can be employed [17,55]. The CMA algorithm makes use of the constant symbol
amplitude property in single amplitude level constellations such as QPSK or BPSK to evaluate a
cost function. The taps of the filters are updated following a gradient descendant approach of the
given cost function. For constellations having different amplitude levels, a multimodulus based
algorithm (MMA) employing cost functions which depend on the different amplitude levels of the
constellation can be employed [56].
CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 19

xin
hxx xout  hxxH xin  hxyH yin

hxy

h yx

yin
h yy yout  h yxH xin  h yyH yin

Figure 2.8: Adaptive MIMO equalizer structure.

2.4.5 Frequency Offset Compensation

Once synchronization between transmitter and receiver clocks is achieved, the received signal
remains impaired with phase noise. The remaining phase noise relates to the frequency difference
between the free running transmitting and local oscillator lasers (frequency offset) and the phase
noise coming from the non-spectral purity (laser phase noise) transmitter and LO lasers. In practice,
it is convenient to mitigate for these impairments separately [17]. The mitigation of the bulk
frequency offset in the first place improves the efficiency of the subsequent carrier phase recovery
as it reduces the amount of phase noise it needs to track. In addition, many carrier phase recovery
schemes are only unbiased in the presence of zero frequency offset. Non-data-aided frequency
offset estimation algorithms are preferred as the use of training symbols is not required in these
cases. Frequency offset algorithms can largely be divided into three categories [57]. The first
method uses the M-th power operation to remove the modulation component and extract the
residual frequency offset either in time domain differential phase based methods [58,59] or
frequency domain FFT-based methods [60,61,62]. The M-th power algorithm works well for M-
PSK modulated signals where the modulation can be removed with the M-th power operation.
However, for more general mQAM, the number of suitable symbols for the M-th power operation
decreases with the order of the constellation which decreases the performance of the algorithm.
The second method is based on the blind frequency search algorithm for arbitrary mQAM
constellations [57,63]. This method employs a number of test frequencies which are applied to the
received signal to evaluate a cost function. The frequency offset test minimizing the cost function
corresponds to the estimated frequency offset. The third method employs a starting training
sequence to get an initial frequency offset estimator [64]. Then, the recovered angle in the carrier
phase recovery is used to keep track of the frequency offset.
20 CHAPTER 2. COHERENT OPTICAL FIBER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

2.4.6 Carrier Phase Recovery

After frequency offset compensation, carrier phase recovery algorithms are employed to estimate
and compensate for the phase noise induced by the non-ideal transmitting and local oscillator lasers.
A more in-depth study of different carrier phase recovery schemes is performed in the following 3
and 4 chapters.

2.4.7 Symbol Estimation and Decoding

After carrier phase recovery, symbol estimation and symbol decoding are performed. This process
can be performed by a soft-decision forward error correction (FEC) module on the received
symbols. Alternatively, symbol estimation followed by hard-decision FEC can be employed. In
this case, for general square mQAM constellations and assuming to be limited by AWGN,
rectangular decision boundaries corresponding to the maximum likelihood symbol estimation can
be employed. However, in systems with relatively high phase noise, it is possible to improve the
performance by employing non-linear detection boundaries [66]. Furthermore, phase noise might
impact FEC performance as FEC codes are developed under the assumption of AWGN channels.
Chapter 3
CPR Schemes for Phase Noise Tolerant
Circular mQAM Formats

High spectral efficient modulations have the potential to increase the transmission capacity in
coherent optical communications at no cost in bandwidth requirements. However, as the
modulation order increases, the requirements on the performance of carrier phase recovery
schemes become stricter and their design more complicated. In this chapter, we study the
advantages of employing high order circular mQAM (C-mQAM) against conventional square
mQAM in terms of phase noise tolerance. The implementation complexity of suitable, high phase
noise tolerant CPR schemes for these modulations is also discussed. In this chapter we discuss
Papers I-IV.

3.1 Phase Noise Tolerant C-mQAM

High spectral efficient modulation formats are a promising solution to increase the capacity in
coherent optical communication systems as more information can be encoded per transmitted
symbol. Thus, the use of high order modulation formats comes at no extra bandwidth requirements.
However, the tolerance of these high order modulation formats against different transmission
impairments such as AWGN and laser phase noise is reduced as their constellation points are
inherently closer in the complex plane. Therefore, the requirements on the performance of the
algorithms used to mitigate different signal generation, transmission and reception impairments
are stricter. On the other hand, for the phase noise impairment case, the design of high phase noise
tolerant CPR schemes suitable for high order modulations becomes more difficult. Different feed-
back and feed-forward CPR schemes have been traditionally employed for carrier phase estimation
and compensation. Feedback CPR structures provide poorer phase noise tolerance due to the long
required feedback delay [18]. The processing speed of the ASICs in which CPR schemes are
implemented is typically much less than the baud rates employed in current coherent transmission

21
22 CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT…

systems [67]. This means that the data processing, for a real time ASIC implementation, must be
performed by means of massive parallelization and pipelining. Parallelization refers to data
processing in several replicated modules at the same time. Pipelining consists in breaking the
structure of an algorithm in different steps and sequentially performing each of them at every clock
cycle. Therefore, the parallelization and pipelining required to perform CPR on the incoming high
baud rate signal creates a long feedback delay for feedback based CPR schemes which hinders its
phase noise tolerance. In practice, blind feedforward structures are often preferred due to its higher
phase noise tolerance and the possibility to accurately estimate the phase without the need of
training symbols [18,19,65]. Two blind feedforward CPR approaches are traditionally employed
for CPR which mainly rely on the M-th power operation employed in the Viterbi-Viterbi algorithm
or on the blind phase search algorithm:

Viterbi and Viterbi (V&V) algorithm:

The Viterbi and Viterbi algorithm employs the uniform angular distribution characteristic of m-
PSK constellations [22]. The modulation component in these constellations can be removed
employing the non-linear M-th power operation on the received symbols. The V&V operation
principle for CPR is illustrated in Figure 3.1. In order to perform the V&V algorithm for CPR, a
block of received symbols is firstly considered. The modulation component of the received
symbols within the block is then removed by the M-th power operation. The sum of 2N+1 symbols
is then considered to average the impact of AWGN followed by angle calculation and division by
M. The calculated phase noise estimator is then unwrapped in order to reduce cycle slip occurrence.
Cycle slips might occur due to AWGN-induced unwrap events causing rotations of the
constellation [19]. The final phase noise estimator is used to compensate for the phase noise of the
original symbol in the middle of the block.

ˆ
x k  Symbol e  jk x̂  k 
 M 
 xk n    
N


1
Block ˆk  arg  ˆk  unwrap ˆk
(2N+1)  n  N  M

x k 

Delay

Figure 3.1: Viterbi and Viterbi block diagram for carrier phase recovery.
CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT … 23


2

unwrap 4  j
j  min  Di 
d k  n ,i
calculation
x k  Symbol x̂  k 

Decision
j f

Distance


Circuit
e

4
Block  j i
e

i
n M

(2M+1)

ˆ 
Di 
 i 
i     i  0.... B  1
B  x k 
Delay

Figure 3.2: Blind phase search block diagram for carrier phase recovery.

Blind phase search algorithm:

The operation principle of the blind phase search algorithm is illustrated in Figure 3.2 [18]. First,
a 2N+1 block of consecutive received symbols are considered for CPR. The block of received
symbols is rotated by a number of test phases B and fed into a decision circuit module. The decision
circuit module defines the closest constellation points in the ideal constellation for all symbols in
the block and for each of the rotated blocks. The squared distances of the 2M+1 symbols to its
closest constellation points in the original constellation are calculated for each of the rotated block
of symbols. Then, the sum of 2M+1 squared distances to the ideal constellation points, for all the
rotated blocks, is calculated for AWGN averaging and considered to be the BPS metric distance.
The test phase providing the minimum BPS metric distance is considered to be the phase noise
estimator for the symbol in the middle of the block. The phase noise estimator is then unwrapped
to reduce cycle slip occurrence and used to compensate for the phase noise of the original symbols.
The V&V algorithm for CPR cannot directly be employed in high order mQAM constellations
(m≥16) as the angular modulation component of all constellation points, for these cases, is not
uniformly distributed. Different algorithms have been proposed to adapt the V&V algorithm for
high order mQAM constellations based on a QPSK partitioning approach [23-25][68-72]. An
amplitude symbol module classification (partitioning) is firstly employed to isolate the mQAM
constellation points belonging to QPSK angular positions. The QPSK partitioned symbols are then
employed for phase noise estimation in the V&V algorithm. However, since the symbols in high
order mQAM constellations have different amplitudes, it is convenient to normalize the partitioned
symbols prior to the M-th power operation. The normalization operation ensures that all symbols
inside the considered block contribute equally in the phase noise estimation process [23].
24 CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT…

1    N  x 
M



ˆk  unwrap arg    k n   (3.1)
M   x

   k n  
n  N

The small percentage of constellation points suitable for CPR in the V&V method limits the phase
noise tolerance of this algorithm when applied to high order mQAM constellations. Moreover, the
partitioning process is a less efficient process for low OSNR values and/or high order
constellations which again, limits the performance of the algorithm.
The BPS algorithm, on the other hand, provides good phase noise tolerance and scalability to high
order constellations as all constellation points can be employed for phase noise estimation.
However, the enhanced phase noise tolerance comes at the expense of a large implementation
complexity of the algorithm [71-73]. The number of required test phases to achieve high phase
noise tolerance largely increases with the modulation order creating a burden for its real
implementation. The reduction of the BPS implementation complexity, such as employing
different BPS distance metric calculations or reducing the number of required test phases, is under
extensive research [73,74]. Multi-stage CPR algorithms employing different approaches for each
of the stages have been proposed and shown to relax the implementation complexity of the overall
CPR scheme while maintaining a high phase noise tolerance [68-75]. However, the resulting multi-
stage CPR schemes still show a considerable high implementation complexity. This is especially
important for industrial applications as the trend is to transition towards pluggable transceivers
where power dissipation becomes critical.
A different alternative approach to achieve high phase noise tolerance at low computational
complexity levels is to re-arrange the constellation points in a circular mQAM (C-mQAM)
constellation shape [76]. Circularly shaped mQAM constellations inherently provide higher phase
noise tolerance compared to conventional square mQAM constellations. Additionally, the low
complex V&V algorithm can efficiently be employed for CPR in these constellations as all
constellation points can be used for phase noise estimation. The C-16QAM and C-64QAM
constellations illustrated in Figure 3.3 have been proposed to increase phase noise tolerance in
coherent optical communication systems [76].
CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT … 25

Im Im

Re Re

Figure 3.3: Circular 16QAM constellation shape a). Circular 64QAM constellation shape b)

3.2 Adaptive Boundaries for Cycle slip Mitigation

The phase noise tolerance increase of these C-mQAM constellations, together with the use of the
normalized V&V algorithm for CPR has been demonstrated in [76]. However, its achievable phase
noise tolerance was limited due to the impact of cycle slips in these constellations. The required
m-th power operation for the modulation component removal in the normalized V&V operation
caused n·2π/M constellation rotations due to cycle slips in the unwrap module. Where n is an
integer number and M corresponds to the different number of uniformly distributed angular
modulation components of the constellation points. The C-mQAM constellations illustrated in
Figure 3.3 do not possess a 2π/M angular symmetry and any cycle slip of this value will result in
an ambiguity of the received constellation. We proposed a module after the normalized V&V
algorithm to detect asymmetrical constellation rotations due to cycle slips as shown in Figure 3.4.
A received block of symbols after the normalized V&V process for CPR are passed to the adaptive
boundaries module. In this module, the distance of the symbols in the

x[0] Adaptive boundaries module

Delay

Minimum
x - N-1 , N-1 distance
2 2 d ref.[k]
Symbol
seq. Normalized Sliding Differential SER
Reference Constellation Voronoi
Comparison Accumulator
V-V algorithm block constellation decision decision decoding counter

d rot.[k]
Minimum
distance

-j π Reference
e4 constellation

Figure 3.4: Block diagram of the proposed adaptive boundaries module for carrier phase recovery in
circular mQAM constellations with rotational asymmetry. Particular case of C-16QAM is shown
26 CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT…

Figure 3.5: OSNR sensitivity penalty versus combined linewidth symbol duration product at a SER of
10-3 for a C-16QAM and C-64QAM transmission systems with and without the proposed adaptive
boundaries module and compared to BPS CPR in a Sq-16QAM.

block to both the original constellation and its 2π/M rotated version is calculated. Based on this
distance metric, a decision on whether the received symbols after CPR belong to the original
constellation or to its 2π/M rotated version is made. Detailed description of the method as well as
a suitable differential encoding method for this case can be found in Paper I.
The OSNR penalty versus the combined linewidth symbol duration product of the proposed CPR
method is illustrated in Figure 3.5 for a symbol error rate (SER) of 1e-3. It is observed that the
proposed adaptive boundaries method enhances the achievable phase noise tolerance of the
normalized V&V algorithm for CPR in C-mQAM constellations. Larger phase noise tolerance
compared to the BPS algorithm applied to square 16QAM constellations is also reported.

3.3 n-PSK Partitioning algorithm for C-mQAM

The adaptive boundaries method solves the received constellation ambiguity problem due to cycle
slips in the V&V method applied to C-mQAM constellations enhancing its phase noise tolerance.
However, its overall implementation complexity is also increased. In order to lower the complexity
of the CPR task for C-mQAM constellations, we propose an n-PSK partitioning based CPR
recovery method whose block diagram is illustrated in Figure 3.6 Paper II. The received symbols
are firstly classified based on their amplitude into odd and even constellation amplitude levels.
Odd and even amplitude symbol constellation levels are illustrated in Figure 3.7. An angular 2π/M
rotation is applied to the symbols belonging to even amplitude classes.
CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT … 27

DELAY

SYMBOL DECISION
Podd







PRE-DETECTION

N
 ()  2

unwrap ˆ
  
 
AMPLITUDE


Peven


ˆ  arg 


x[k]
ˆ
e  j xˆ[k]

N
2
ˆ 
2
j
e N

n-PSK Partition Normalized V-V CPE

Figure 3.6: Block diagram of the proposed n-PSK partitioning scheme. N represents the total amount of
uniformly distributed angular modulation components in a C-mQAM constellation

M corresponds to the number of different and uniformly distributed angular modulation

components of the symbols in a C-mQAM constellation. After this angular correction process, it
is noted that the resulting number of angular modulation components in the C-mQAM
constellation is reduced to M/2. In this case, the M/2-th power operation can be employed in the
V&V method for phase noise estimation. Utilizing the M/2-th power operation in the V&V module
provides different advantages. Firstly, a cycle slip event will cause an n·4π/M constellation rotation.
As C-mQAM constellations have n·4π/M rotational symmetry, no further modules to resolve
asymmetrical ambiguities are required which drastically reduces the implementation complexity
of the algorithm. Secondly, the required complexity to perform the M/2-th power operation is less
compared to that of the M-th power operation which reduces the overall implementation
complexity. Finally, employing the N/2-th power operation in the V&V CPR algorithm yields
higher performance and the probability of cycle slip occurrence is reduced. The proposed bit
mapping for C-16QAM and C-64QAM together with a sectorial based differential decoding for
C-mQAM constellations are illustrated are illustrated in Figure 3.7.
The OSNR penalty versus the combined linewidth symbol duration product performance of the
proposed n-PSK partitioning algorithm compared to the BPS and the adaptive boundaries schemes
is shown in Figure 3.8. The results correspond to the OSNR penalty needed to achieve the BER
FEC limits of 1e-2 and 3.8e-3 for C-16QAM and C-64QAM respectively. The proposed n-PSK
partitioning CPR is shown to provide higher performance than the adaptive boundaries scheme for
the BER target of 3.8e-3 case. It is noted that similar performance as the BPS
28 CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT…

Figure 3.7: a) Distribution of the constellation points in a C-16QAM constellation. b) distribution of the
constellation points in a C-64QAM. Proposed bit mapping, differential sector encoding and symbol
amplitude classes are also illustrated for both the constellations.

algorithm applied to C-mQAM constellations is achieved in this case. In the case where the BER
target was 1e-2, the impact of AWGN in the partitioning module at low OSNR values hinders the
performance of the algorithm and similar phase noise tolerance than the adaptive boundaries
scheme can be achieved as discussed in Paper II. However, a drastic reduction in the
implementation complexity of the proposed n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme compared to that of
the implementation complexity of the BPS algorithm can be achieved. The implementation
complexity reduction factors of the proposed n-PSK partitioning algorithm relative to the rest of

Figure 3.8: OSNR sensitivity penalty versus combined linewidth symbol duration product at a BER of
3.8e-3 employing different carrier phase recovery algorithms for C-64QAM, Sq-64QAM constellations a)
and C-16QAM and Sq-16QAM constellations b)
CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT … 29

C.C. relative to
Algorithm n-PSK Partitioning [DC=1] Specifications
(multipliers | adders)
4.3 | 8.6 M=19, β=32, DC=0
BPS Sq-16QAM
27.2 | 32.5 M=19, β=32, DC=1
2.7 | 5.4 M=19, β=64, DC=0
BPS Sq-64QAM
60.0 | 63.9 M=19, β=64, DC=1
BPS C-16QAM 27.2 | 32.5 M=19, β=32, DC=1
BPS C-64QAM 30.5 | 32.4 M=19, β=32, DC=1
Adapt. Bound.
2.6 | 2.7 M=19, Mad=19, DC=1
C-16QAM
Adapt. Bound.
2.8 | 2.9 M=19, Mad=19, DC=1
C-64QAM
Note: DC=1 implies hard decision using distance calculation (worst case complexity). DC=0 implies a
decision when only using comparators (best case complexity). CC: Computational Complexity.
Table 3.1: Computational complexity reduction factors relative to that of the n-PSK partitioning for
different specifications and constellations

studied CPR schemes are illustrated in Table 3.1. Detailed explanations on the computational
complexity calculations as well as for the proposed n-PSK partitioning method together with the
penalties of the proposed bit mapping and constellation shaping can be found in Paper II.

3.4 Two Stage n-PSK Partitioning CPR Scheme for C-mQAM

The partitioning module in the n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme ultimately limits its phase noise
tolerance especially at low OSNR values and/or high order constellations where symbol
partitioning errors are likely to occur. In order to reduce the number of classification errors, we
propose to divide the CPR scheme in two stages. The operation principle of the proposed two stage
n-PSK partitioning scheme is illustrated in Figure 3.9. The first stage performs the conventional
n-PSK partitioning CPR. The output of the first stage corresponds to an estimation of the received
constellation which is fed into the second stage. It is noted that a delay line (delay 2) is used to
synchronize the input symbols to the CPR scheme and the input symbols to the second stage. The
second stage performs firstly a high efficient symbol decision with optimal boundaries (inset c) to
the output symbols from the first stage. This symbol decision serves as “a priori” information of
the CPR input symbols for its optimal partition into odd or even classes. It is noted that the less
efficient amplitude symbol partitioning module in the n-PSK partitioning scheme is replaced by a
higher performance symbol classification based on optimal boundaries. Alternatively, suboptimal
boundaries based on symbol phase and amplitude discrimination (inset d) for symbol estimation
can also be employed to alleviate the computational complexity.
30 CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT…

a) b) c) d) e)

Podd Podd
xk    ()  2   
N N

   ()  2

AMPLITUDE
ˆ  arg      ˆ1 
2

unwrap ˆ
SYMBOL ˆ  arg   
 M 2   
  ˆ2 
2

unwrap ˆ
   
DECISION DECISION

M1 N
 jˆ1  N
Peven e Peven
2
j
e N 2
j ˆ
e  j 2
DELAY 1
e N

x̂k 
DELAY 2

DELAY 3

n-PSK partition Normalized V-V CPE n-PSK partition Normalized V-V CPE

Stage 1 Stage 2

Figure 3.9: Block diagram of the proposed two-stage n-PSK partitioning carrier phase recovery scheme.
Inset a) Input symbols. Inset b) Estimated constellation after first stage. Inset c) symbol detection employing
optimal decision boundaries. Inset d) symbol detection employing sub-optimal decision boundaries (an
alternative option to c) for complexity reduction). Inset e) Final corrected symbols.

Bearing in mind the overall computational complexity of the proposed two stage n-PSK
partitioning algorithm, it is important to note that most of the necessary operations needed in the
V&V module of the second stage have already been performed during the first stage and can be
re-utilized. The re-usage of the operations performed during the first stage in the second stage is
illustrated in the flow chart diagram of the proposed scheme in Figure 3.10.
The complexity reduction factors relative to the proposed two stage n-PSK partitioning CPR
scheme compared to the BPS algorithm are shown in Table II for the case of sub-optimal
boundaries. Detailed analysis of the computational complexity calculations for the proposed two
stage n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme can be found in Paper III. Figure 3.11 shows the OSNR
penalty versus the combined linewidth symbol duration product for 16QAM (inset a) and 64QAM
(inset b) at the FEC BER target of 3.8e-3. It is observed that the proposed two stage n-PSK
partitioning provides higher phase noise tolerance than the BPS algorithm when applied to

Figure 3.10: Flow chart diagram of the proposed two-stage n-PSK partitioning CPR scheme for an
optimization of its implementation complexity.
CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT … 31

Algorithm Reduction Factors [DC = 1, M1 = M2 = 19] (Multipliers | Adders) Specifications

3.8 | 3.3 M = 19, β = 32, DC = 0
BPS Sq-16QAM
24.5 | 30.1 M = 19, β = 32, DC = 1
2.6 | 1.9 M = 19, β = 64, DC = 0
BPS Sq-64QAM
59.1 | 63.3 M = 19, β = 64, DC = 1
BPS C-16QAM 24.5 | 30.1 M = 19, β = 32, DC = 1
BPS C-64QAM 29.1 | 32.2 M = 19, β = 32, DC = 1
Note: DC = 1 implies hard decision (worst-case complexity). DC = 0 implies soft decision.
Table 3.2: Computational complexity reduction factors relative to that of the two-stage n-PSK
partitioning algorithm employing sub-optimal decision boundaries in the symbol decision circuit module.

C-mQAM constellations. The second stage of the algorithm, although shown to be implementable
with relatively low complexity, can noticeably increase the phase noise tolerance of the overall
CPR scheme. This is especially of consequence for low OSNR cases such as the case where the
BER target was set to 1e-2, where the proposed two stage n-PSK partitioning provides similar
performance than the BPS algorithm as shown in Paper III.

(a) (b)

Figure 3.11: OSNR sensitivity penalty versus the combined linewidth symbol duration product at a BER
of 3.8e-3 employing different carrier phase recovery algorithms for C-16QAM, Sq-16QAM constellations
a) and C-64QAM and Sq-64QAM constellations b)

3.4 Experimental validation of the proposed CPR schemes for C-mQAM

In this section we present the experimental validation of the proposed n-PSK partitioning and the
two stage n-PSK partitioning and its comparison with the BPS algorithm. The experimental setup
for the validation of the proposed algorithms can be found in Paper IV. Figure 3.12 a) shows
the BER versus the OSNR curves performance of traditional DDPLL [18,77-79] and Kalman [80]
CPR recovery schemes in a 28 Gbaud Sq-16QAM. Figure 3.12 b) shows the BER versus the OSNR
performance of the proposed n-PSK partitioning algorithm for a 28 Gbaud C-16QAM.
32 CHAPTER 3. CPR SCHEMES FOR PHASE NOISE TOLERANT…

a) b)

Figure 3.12: BER versus OSNR for a 16QAM with Kalman and DDPLL CPR schemes employing different
emulated laser linewidths a). BER versus OSNR for a C-16QAM with the proposed n-PSK partitioning
CPR scheme.

Superior phase noise tolerance of the proposed n-PSK partitioning scheme together with the C-
16QAM compared to Sq-16QAM with traditional CPR schemes is observed. Figure 3.13 shows
the BER versus OSNR performance of the proposed n-PSK partitioning and the two stage n-PSK
partitioning compared to the BPS algorithm in C-16QAM constellations. The proposed two stage
n-PSK partitioning algorithm is observed to provide superior phase noise tolerance than the BPS
algorithm. Details on the experimental setup and the specifications of the employed algorithms
can be found in Paper III.

Figure 3.13: BER versus OSNR curves for a 28-Gbaud C-16QAM back-to-back transmission employing
different CPR algorithms for different emulated linewidths. N errors: Number of errors.
Chapter 4
Carrier Phase Recovery Algorithms for
Square mQAM

State of the art CPR schemes for high order mQAM mainly suffer from either relatively poor phase
noise tolerance (V&V based CPR schemes) or large computational complexity (BPS based CPR
schemes). In this section, we discuss our findings related to the inherent limitations of the state-
of-the-art BPS algorithm limiting its achievable phase noise tolerance and implementation
complexity. We present a cost effective solution to alleviate the BPS limitations in order to unleash
its achievable phase noise tolerance and implementation complexity. Furthermore, we study how
our proposed solution can be exploited in multi-stage CPR schemes to further enhance the phase
noise tolerance of BPS based multi-stage CPR schemes for high order square mQAM. In this
section, we discuss Papers V-VII.

4.1 Efficient blind phase search based carrier phase recovery with angular quantization
noise mitigation
The state-of-the-art BPS algorithm is considered as a promising solution for carrier phase recovery
in high order mQAM systems due to its high phase noise tolerance and scalability to different
modulation orders [18]. However, in order for the algorithm to be practically implementable, it is
important that the number of test phases employed in the algorithm is kept relatively low. The
number of real adders and multipliers required for its practical implementation, e.g. in an ASICs,
largely increases with the number of test phases which consequently has an impact on power
consumption amongst other factors. On the other hand, the required number of test phases to
achieve a certain performance also increases with the modulation order. In practice, there exists a
trade-off between performance and implementation

33
34 CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM

a)
a) b) b)

FN PSD Spectrum (Hz2/Hz)

Angle (Rad)
Angle (Rad)
C-BPS Estimation Bandwidth (M=8)

Out-of-Band Angle
Quantization Noise

Hz Symbol Index

Figure 4.1: a) FN-PSD of different tracked phases by the C-BPS algorithm employing different number of
test phases. b) Time domain tracked phase by the C-BPS algorithm for different number of test phases.

complexity. As earlier discussed in Section 3.1, the state-of-the-art BPS algorithm de-rotates the
received signal by a finite set of “test phases” and selects a test phase from the set of test phases
which minimizes an error metric distance function. The selected test phase is considered to be the
phase noise estimator and is used to compensate for the phase noise of the received signal. It is
important to note that the phase noise estimator output of the BPS algorithm is bounded to one of
the employed test phases as illustrated in Figure 4.1 b). If the number of test phases in the BPS
algorithm is lower than the resolution of the incoming signal, quantization noise is added in the
BPS phase noise estimator. When this BPS phase noise estimator, containing quantization noise,
is used to compensate for the phase noise of the original signal, the quantization noise is passed to
the angular component of the corrected original signal. The process can be thought as an input
signal to a system having a certain bit resolution, e.g. an ASICs with a certain bit resolution, which
is then passed to a lower resolution system, e.g. BPS with β resolution, and then passed back to
the original higher resolution system. It is noted that quantization noise is added in the process
when transitioning from a high resolution system to a system with lower resolution. Therefore, in
order to improve the performance of the BPS algorithm, the spectral components of the
quantization noise lying outside the bandwidth of the phase noise estimator given by the BPS block
filter must be filtered as shown in Figure 4.1. This figure shows the frequency noise spectrum of
the phase tracked by the BPS algorithm employing different number of test phases. Frequency
noise increase due to angular quantization noise is observed outside the BPS phase noise
estimation bandwidth given by the BPS block filter (≈1.6 GHz corresponding to a filter length of
17 symbols for a 28Gbaud signal). The frequency noise due to angular quantization noise increases
with the decrease in the number of employed test phases. Figure 4.1 b) shows
CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM 35

Angular Quantization

2

unwrap 4  j
j  min  Di 
d k  n ,i

Noise Filter
calculation
x  k  Symbol x̂  k 

Decision

Distance
f


Circuit

j f
4
Block
e  j i

i
n M

e

(2M+1)

ˆ 
Di 
 i 
i     i  0.... B  1
B 
Delay
Conventional Blind Phase Search
Proposed F-BPS

Figure 4.2: Block diagram of the C-BPS CPR scheme with the proposed angular quantization noise filter.

the temporal phase noise evolution tracked by the BPS CPR scheme for different number of test
phases. The angular quantization steps increase with the reduction in the number of test phases
which increases the angular quantization noise as shown correspondingly in Figure 4.1 a). We
propose a filtered BPS (F-BPS) CPR scheme to mitigate the angular quantization noise of the
conventional BPS (C-BPS) as illustrated in Figure 4.2, see Paper V. In order to maintain a low
overall CPR implementation complexity, we employ a low complex sliding average (without
weighthing coefficients) filter for quantization noise mitigation. Figure 4.3 shows the OSNR
sensitivity penalty versus the combined linewidth symbol duration product for 16QAM and
64QAM employing the conventional BPS and the proposed F-BPS CPR schemes at different BER
limits. It is observed that the proposed F-BPS CPR scheme outperforms the C-BPS implementation
in terms of phase noise tolerance. Furthermore, when employing low values of test phases, the
quantization noise limits the achievable performance of the C-BPS and a

16QAM
16QAM 64QAM
64QAM
3,0 3,0
BER=3.8e-3)

BER=2e-2)

2,5 C-BPS (=32) 2,5 C-BPS (=64)

(@BER=3.8e-3)

(@BER=2e-2)

F-BPS (=32) F-BPS (=64)

2,0
C-BPS (=9) 2,0 C-BPS (=12)
F-BPS (=9) F-BPS (=12)
1,5 1,5
Penalty(@
Penalty(@

OSNR Penalty
OSNR Penalty

1,0 1,0

0,5 0,5
OSNR

0,0 0,0

1E-5 1E-4 1E-3 1E-5 1E-4

LinewidthSymbol
Linewidth Symbol Duration
Duration Product
Product Linewidth
Linewidth Symbol
Symbol Duration Product
Duration Product

Figure 4.3: OSNR sensitivity penalty versus combined linewidth symbol duration product comparative
between the proposed F-BPS and the C-BPS for 16QAM and 64QAM employing different number of test
phases at BER levels of 3.8e-3 and2e-2 respectively.
36 CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM

Tolerable 
Tolerable ΔνT for 16QAM
Tss16QAM Tolerable ΔνT
Tolerable sTfor
s
64QAM
64QAM

-4
3,6x10 -4
1,0x10
BER 3.8e-3)

2e-2)
s (@BER3.8e-3) Complexity LW. Tol. Complexity LW. Tol.

BER2e-2)
-4
3,2x10 Reduction ~72% ~116% Reduction ~81% ~131%
-5
8,0x10

BER
-4
2,8x10

s (@
-5
6,0x10

Ts (@
Ts (@

-4

ΔνT
2,4x10
TolerableΔνT

-5

Tolerable
-4 4,0x10
2,0x10
C-BPS

Tolerable
C-BPS
Tolerable

-4
1,6x10 F-BPS -5
2,0x10
F-BPS

-4
1,2x10
0,0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
βTest
TestPhases
Phases βTest
TestPhases
Phases

Figure 4.4: Tolerable combined linewidth symbol duration product comparative between the proposed F-
BPS and C-BPS for 16QAM and 64QAM employing different number of test phases at BER levels of 3.8e-
3 and 2e-2 respectively and for 1 dB OSNR penalty.

significant performance improvement can be achieved with the proposed F-BPS scheme. The
quantization noise mitigation in the F-BPS allows for a drastic reduction in the required number
of test phases to achieve the C-BPS performance. Therefore, the proposed F-BPS scheme can be
a potential low implementation complexity solution for high phase noise tolerant CPR schemes in
high order mQAM systems. Figure 4.4 illustrates the tolerable linewidth of the proposed F-BPS
and C-BPS for 16QAM and 64QAM versus the number of employed test phases at different BER
levels. The results correspond to the achievable linewidth tolerance for 1 dB of OSNR penalty at
the given BER limits. Superior performance of the proposed F-BPS compared to the C-BPS
implementation is observed. Furthermore, a significant achievable reduction in the number of
required test phases to achieve the C-BPS performance is stated. The achievable implementation
complexity reduction factors of the proposed F-BPS and its performance improvement comes as
an addition to previously reported complexity reduction efforts [74,77]. This is because we provide
a targeted solution for angular quantization noise mitigation while previous efforts mainly focus
on the complexity relaxation of the BPS metric distance calculation. A detailed description of the
F-BPS CPR scheme along with a discussion on its computational complexity compared to that of
the C-BPS CPR scheme can be found in Paper V.
CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM 37

4.2 Multi-stage Carrier Phase Recovery Schemes with Angular Quantization Noise
Mitigation
In this section, we analyze the architecture design of multi-stage BPS-based CPR schemes in order
to mitigate the impact of angular quantization noise introduced by the C-BPS stage. The proposed
F-BPS solution can be employed in multi-stage CPR schemes, where the C-BPS is employed in
any of the stages, to further enhance their phase noise tolerance. Further, we prove that cascading
the F-BPS CPR scheme in a F-BPS+F-BPS structure provides higher phase noise tolerance at
lower computational complexity compared to the single stage F-BPS structure.

4.2.1 Multi-Stage Carrier Phase Recovery Architecture Design

In order for a CPR scheme to achieve high phase noise tolerance in high order mQAM
constellations the BPS is employed for the first stage. This is because, as stated in Section 3.1, the
BPS algorithm employs all the received symbols for phase noise estimation. In practice, in order
to limit the implementation complexity of the overall multi-stage CPR scheme, the performance
of the BPS stage is deliberately reduced by significantly reducing the number of test phases. The
subsequent stages aim to increase the accuracy of the phase noise estimation based on the output
of the BPS-based stage. Since part of the phase noise has been removed during the first stage, a
high efficient symbol partitioning can be achieved for further V&V based CPR stages, for instance
by employing symbol hard decision instead of an amplitude symbol based partitioning.
(a) (b)
X(k) X(k)

Stage 1 Delay Stage 1 Delay

̂1 ̂1

X1(k) X1(k)

X(k)
Stage 2 Stage 2

Delay Delay
̂2 ̂2

X1(k)

X2(k) X2(k)

Figure 4.5: Block diagram of two different multi-stage CPR architectures. a) Multi-stage CPR scheme
where Stage 2 compensates for the residual phase noise after Stage 1. b) Multi-stage CPR scheme where
Stage 2 employs the estimated constellation after Stage 1 as a priori information for CPR of the original
input symbols.
38 CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM

However, if the second or later stages aim to compensate for the residual phase noise after the BPS
stage, one must observe that the quantization noise introduced by the C-BPS stage might limit the
overall multi-stage CPR performance. This is of significant importance when employing low
number of test phases in the BPS stage which results in higher angular quantization noise levels.
Figure 4.5 shows two different multi-stage CPR architecture designs. The BPS CPR scheme is
assumed to be employed for Stage 1 in both approaches. Figure 4.5 a) corresponds to a multi-stage
CPR scheme where Stage 2 aims to compensate for the residual phase noise after Stage 1. In this
case, it is observed that the input of the CPR in Stage 2 contains high levels of quantization noise
which might impact the achievable phase noise tolerance of the CPR employed in Stage 2. Figure
4.5 b) however, employs the input symbols of the multi-stage CPR for phase noise estimation in
all the stages. In this case, the quantization noise at the output of the BPS stage in Stage 1 can be
efficiently avoided. Stage 2 performs CPR on the initial input symbols based on the information
provided after Stage 1. It is noted that the performance of both approaches can be enhanced if the
proposed F-BPS is employed for CPR in Stage 1. In this case, for the multi-stage approach shown
in Figure 4.5 a), the amount of quantization noise passed to Stage 2 is reduced. For the multi-stage
CPR approach shown in Figure 4.5 b), the constellation estimation required by Stage 2 as ‘a priori
information’ of the input symbols corresponds to a more accurate estimation as it contains less
quantization noise. Figure 4.6 illustrates different possible implementations of Stage 2. We study
the utilization of three different multi-stage CPR

(a) (b) (c)

X1(k) X1(k)
X1(k)
BPS QPSK X(k)
X(k) Transformation
̂BPS MLE

LPF Normalized
̂2 V&V
̂2 ̂2

Figure 4.6: Block diagrams of different CPR schemes. a) Filtered blind phase search (F-BPS). b) Maximum
likelihood estimator (MLE). c) QPSK transformation followed by V&V CPR scheme.
CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM 39

C.C. relative to
Algorithm C-BPS Specifications
(multipliers | adders)
C-BPS 1|1 M1=31, β1=64,
F-BPS 5.1 | 5.1 M1=31, β1=12, l1=31
F-BPS+VV 6 | 6.6 M1=31, β1=8, l1=31, M2=19
F-BPS+MLE 6.8 | 7.2 M1=31, β1=8, l1=31, M2=19
M1=31, β1=5, l1=31
F-BPS+F-BPS 7.6 | 7.8
M2=19, β2=4, l2=19
Note: CC: Computational Complexity.
Table 4.1: Computational complexity reduction factors relative to that of the C-BPS of different CPR
schemes with different specifications and for a 64QAM.

implementations. The proposed multi-stage CPR implementations correspond to the F-BPS for
Stage 1 combined with F-BPS, MLE and V&V options for Stage 2 as shown in Figure 4.6 a), b)
and c) respectively (F-BPS+F-BPS, F-BPS+MLE and F-BPS+V&V respectively). It is noted that
the proposed F-BPS+MLE and F-BPS+V&V multi-stage CPR schemes correspond to
implementation b) in Figure 4.5 while the proposed F-BPS+FBPS corresponds to implementation
a) in Figure 4.5. The second stage of the proposed F-BPS+F-FBPS scheme performs a phase search
over a phase span given by the resolution of the first stage in order to increase the overall phase
search resolution of the multi-stage CPR. Further details on the FBPS+F-BPS scheme can be found
in Paper VII. Figure 4.7 a) shows the OSNR penalty versus combined linewidth symbol duration
product performance at a BER target of 2e-2 when

2,5

C-BPS (=64) C-BPS ()

F-BPS (=64) F-BPS (=12)
F-BPS+VV (=64) 2,0 F-BPS+VV (=8)
2
F-BPS+MLE (=64) F-BPS+MLE (=8)
F-BPS+F-BPS (1=32 & 2=32) F-BPS+F-BPS (1=5 & 2=4)
OSNR Penalty (dB)
OSNR Penalty (dB)

1,5

1 1,0

0,5
a) b)
0 0,0
-5 -4 -5 -4
10 10 10 10
Tol. LW- Symbol Duration Product (s) Tol. LW- Symbol Duration Product (s)

Figure 4.7: OSNR penalty versus tolerable combined linewidth symbol duration product for a 28 Gbaud
64QAM signal at a BER of 2e-2 employing different CPR schemes. a) The studied CPR schemes employing
a large number of effective test phases. b) The studied CPR schemes employing a low number of effective
test phases
40 CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM

-4
1,4x10

Tol. LW- Symbol Duration Product (s)

-4
1,2x10

-4
1,0x10

-5
8,0x10

-5
6,0x10
C-BPS
-5
4,0x10 F-BPS
F-BPS+VV
-5 F-BPS+MLE
2,0x10
F-BPS+F-BPS

0,0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Effective Number of Test Phases ()

Figure 4.8: Tolerable linewidth symbol duration product versus effective number of test phases for 1 dB
of OSNR penalty at a BER of 2e-2for a 28 Gbaud 64QAM employing different CPR schemes.

employing 64 effective number of test phases. Figure 4.7 b) shows the OSNR penalty versus the
combined linewidth symbol duration product performance of the proposed algorithms for low
values of effective number of test phases. It is observed that the proposed multi-stage CPR schemes
show higher performance than single stage CPRs at a lower implementation complexity.
This can be attributed to an enhanced performance of the algorithms employed in Stage 2 as, within
its estimation block of symbols, the frequency mean has been removed by the first stage. Figure
4.8 shows the achievable combined linewidth symbol duration product versus the effective number
of employed test phases for 1 dB of OSNR penalty at a BER of 2e-2. The F-BPS+F-BPS structure
is shown to provide the highest phase noise tolerance at low implementation complexity levels.
The computational complexity reduction factors of the proposed multi-stage CPR schemes relative
to the C-BPS implementation complexity are provided in Table 4.1. A more detailed discussion
about the proposed multi-stage CPRs, its implementation complexity and its performance can be
found in Papers VI-VII.

4.3 Experimental validation of the proposed CPR schemes for Sq-mQAM

In this section, we present the experimental validation of the proposed algorithms for high order
Sq-mQAM. Details on the setup for the experimental validation of the proposed schemes can be
found in Paper VI. Firstly, the performance of the proposed F-BPS is experimentally validated
and compared to that of the C-BPS. Figure 4.9 a) shows the BER versus the number of employed
test phases performance of the proposed F-BPS compared to C-BPS for different emulated
linewidth levels at 32 dB of OSNR. The proposed F-BPS CPR scheme is observed to outperform
CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM 41

a) C-BPS
F-BPS
b)
OSNR)
dB OSNR) LW = 3.2MHz LW = 3.2
MHz
2e-2 FEC Limit

LW = 2
32 dB

BER
LW .4MHz

BER
=0
(@31.8

LW = 2.4MHz 0,01 .8M

0,01 Hz
BER(@
BER

LW = 0.8MHz F-BPS =16

C-BPS =16
C-BPS =64

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38

βTest
Test Phases
Phases OSNR (dB)
OSNR dB

Figure 4.9: a) Experimental BER versus number of test phases comparative between F-BPS and C-BPS
CPR schemes for a 28-Gbaud 64QAM at different emulated linewidth levels. b) Experimental BER versus
OSNR comparative between F-BPS and C-BPS schemes for a 28-Gbaud 64QAM at different linewidth
levels.

the C-BPS performance in terms of phase noise tolerance. Furthermore, it is also shown that a
certain BER level can be achieved with a lesser number of test phases with the F-BPS which shows
a potentially low implementation complexity compared to the C-BPS. Figure 4.9 b) shows the
BER versus OSNR curves performance of the proposed F-BPS and the C-BPS employing different
values of test phases and for different emulated linewidth levels. It is shown that a small number
of test phases in the F-BPS scheme are required to achieve the C-BPS performance. Figure 4.10
a) shows the performance of the proposed multi-stage F-BPS+VV compared to F-BPS, C-BPS and
C-BPS+MLE when employing low values of test phases. Figure 4.10 b) shows
0,1
C-BPS
F-BPS
BER (@31.8 dB OSNR)

C-BPS+MLE
LW = F-BPS+VV
3.2 M LW = 3.2 MHz
Hz
2e- 2 FEC
LW =
2.4 M
BER

0,01 Hz
LW = 2.4 MHz
-2
10
C-BPS β=64 LW =
0 .8 MH
z
F-BPS β=16 LW = 0.8 MHz
C-BPS+MLE β=8
F-BPS+VV β=8 a) b)
1E-3
20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

OSNR (dB) Number of β Test Phases

Figure 4.10: a) Experimental BER versus OSNR comparative between F-BPS, C-BPS, CBPS+MLE and
F-BPS+VV schemes for a 28-Gbaud 64QAM at different linewidth levels. b).Experimental BER versus
number of test phases comparative between F-BPS, C-BPS, CBPS+MLE and F-BPS+VV schemes for a
28-Gbaud 64QAM at different emulated linewidth levels.
42 CHAPTER 4. CARRIER PHASE RECOVERY ALGORITHMS FOR SQUARE MQAM

the BER performance versus the number of employed test phases of the proposed F-BPS+VV
compared to the rest of analyzed CPR schemes. It is observed from the figure that multi-stage CPR
structures provide higher performance than single stage CPRs at low implementation complexity
levels.
Chapter 5
Laser Frequency Noise Impact on Coherent
Optical Communications with Electronic
Chromatic Dispersion Compensation

One of the main advantages in coherent optical communications is the possibility to compensate
for signal impairments in the electrical domain. Typical impairments such as chromatic dispersion
can be efficiently mitigated through DSP routines providing enhanced fiber nonlinearity tolerance
or network flexibility. However, it is observed that the received constellation, even after chromatic
dispersion compensation in the DSP, remains impaired with an enhanced phase noise commonly
known as equalization enhanced phase noise (EEPN) [28-31]. In this section, we discuss Papers
VIII-XVI which focus on the interaction between the chromatic dispersion equalizer and the laser
phase noise to characterize and investigate the origin of the EEPN phenomenon.

5.1 Equalization enhanced phase noise in dispersion-unmanaged coherent systems

employing lasers with white frequency noise spectrum
Figure 5.1 represents a general system model of a coherent optical communication system with
electronic chromatic dispersion compensation and is used in this section for EEPN analysis Paper
VIII. This system model corresponds to the most common system configuration where the DSP is
performed after signal reception, on the receiver side. The frequency domain response of the
received signal can be written as Paper VIII

R '  f   Rˆ  f   e jkf  X LO  f   e jkf  X CPR  f  (5.1)

2 2

Tx  LO

43
44 CHAPTER 5. LASER FREQUENCY NOISE IMPACT ON …

Optical Transmission Path (OTP)

Symbol
Pulse r(t) Pre- Dispersive Post- r’(t) Sampling
Shaping
Train Processing fiber Processing
Filter R(f) R’(f)  cˆnδ (t  nTs )
c  (t  nT )
n
n s h ps  t  H ps  f  h f  t  e jkf
2
 (t  nT )
n
s
n

Tx Laser LO Laser

jTx  t  j LO  t 
e X Tx  f  e X LO  f 

Figure 5.1: General system model of a coherent optical communication system with DSP on the receiver
side.

Where Rˆ  f '   R  f '   X Tx  f '  and the combined CPR X TxCPR LO  f   X TxCPR  f   X LOCPR  f 

represents the ideal carrier phase recovery of the transmitting and LO lasers respectively.
Performing the operations in eq. 5.1 in the order of their physical occurrence, due to the non-
associative properties of the multiplication and the convolution, we get

R '  f     Rˆ  f  f1   e   X LO  f1   df1   Xˆ CPR  f 

 2
 2 ff1 
(5.2)
jk f 1

   Tx  LO

2
From eq. 5.2 it is observed that the accumulated chromatic dispersion e jkf is completely removed
and the resulting terms correspond to the EEPN noise enhancement after the chromatic dispersion
compensation. Taking the inverse Fourier transform of eq. 5.2 results in the time domain response
of the received signal as

  kf  j  kf1 

r '  t     X LO  f1   e  jkf  e j 2 f t  relec  t  1  e
t 
  
df1   e j t 
(5.3)
2 Tx CPR
1 1 Tx  LO

     

The term X LO  f1   e jkf in eq. 5.3 indicates the dispersion of the local oscillator. The term
2
1

 kf 
relec  t  1  indicates that the received signal is statistically composed by delayed versions of the
  
transmitted signal proportional to the different frequency components that compose X LO  f1  . For

digital signal transmission eq. 5.3 takes the form


 kf   kf1 

r '  t    cn  X LO  f1   hps  t  nTs  1   e jkf  e

 j t  t 
e  e j 2 f t df1
   j Tx
CPR

(5.4)
2 Tx
1  LO 1

n  
  

Under the assumption of employing an LO lasers with a Lorentzian lineshape Paper IX, [35] the
received signal can be expressed as
CHAPTER 5. LASER FREQUENCY NOISE IMPACT ON … 45

 
 eˆsp  f1 
   kf1   jkf j  kf1 

r '  t    cn  
 t  t 
   e e e  e j 2 f t df1
j Tx
  
(5.5)
2 Tx CPR

 ps 
 
h t nT 1  LO 1

n   
s

 j 2 f1  


 2 

It can be seen from equation x that the delayed versions of the demodulated signal which are
proportional to the statistical frequencies that compose X LO  f1  are weighted by a factor

 j 2 f1    . Therefore, it is noted that the low frequency components of the X

1

2 LO  f  have
1

larger contribution to the EEPN phenomena. The sole elimination of these low frequency
components below a certain frequency cutoff fcutoff can therefore largely reduce the penalty given
by the EEPN in the system. The validation of the presented analysis was carried out in simulations
in Paper IX by frequency modulating an ideal LO with white AWGN noise to emulate different
linewidth levels. The employed AWGN for frequency modulation was high pass filtered, with a
cutoff frequency given by fcutoff, to remove the low frequency noise components of the emulated
laser in order to corroborate its larger impact on the EEPN phenomena. Figure 5.2 shows the BER
versus the fcutoff frequency for a 28 Gbaud QPSK signal (a) and a 28Gbaud 16QAM signal (b) for
the different LO emulated linewidths and cutoff values. It is observed how the BER drops just by
removing a small portion of the low frequency components of the LO laser. Details on the
simulation setup and its analysis can be found in Paper X. The experimental validation of the
analysis is illustrated in Figure 5.2. In this figure, the BER versus ONSR for a 28 Gbaud 16QAM
transmission over 523 km employing different
1 1
(a) 28Gbaud QPSK 2 MHz 28Gbaud 16QAM 2 MHz
OSNR = 20 dB 4 MHz
(b) OSNR = 26 dB 4 MHz
6 MHz 6 MHz
8 MHz 8 MHz
10 MHz 10 MHz
-log(BER)
-log(BER)

2 2

3 3

4 4
5 5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
Cut-off frequency (MHz) Cut-off frequency (MHz)

Figure 5.2: BER vs. Cut-off frequency for 160000 ps/nm of accumulated dispersion and different LO
linewidths. (a) QPSK, (b) 16-QAM.
46 CHAPTER 5. LASER FREQUENCY NOISE IMPACT ON …

-1
10

BER
-2
10
3.8e-3 FEC LIMIT

LO with LW = 1 MHz
LW = 8MHz, fcutoff = 30 MHz
-3 LW = 8MHz, fcutoff= 448 MHz ~ 1.5 dB
10
LW=10MHz, fcutoff=30 MHz
LW=10MHz, fcutoff= 560 MHz

14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
OSNR@0.1nm (dB)

Figure 5.3: BER versus OSNR performance for different emulated laser linewidths and cutoff frequencies
in a 523 km fiber link transmission scenario.

emulated LO linewidths and the proposed high pass filter for EEPN mitigation is illustrated. It is
shown that, as in the simulation case, by removing a small portion of the low frequency part of the
LO laser, the EEPN phenomena can be effectively compensated. A practical way to mitigate EEPN
employing a digital coherent enhancement technique [81] is shown in Paper XI and
experimentally proved in Paper XII.
Although the presented analysis has been carried out for the most common system configuration
where DSP is performed after reception on the receiver side, similar conclusions can be obtained
when analyzing different system configurations Paper XIII. In Paper XIII it is shown that there
exist eight possible configurations for all-electronic impairment mitigation depending on whether
the DSP processing is performed in the transmitter, receiver or partly combined between these two.
Three of these cases are shown to not result in EEPN while for the rest of the combinations the
EEPN is shown to be due to the transmitting, LO or a combination of both lasers phase noise
depending on where the DSP is performed.
Having performed the relevant analyses to characterize the EEPN phenomena, it is important for
the system designer to estimate the EEPN influence on the system in order to make an informative
choice. In Paper VIII we provide closed-form expressions for the estimation of the EEPN penalty
in a given system, the required LO linewidth to limit the EEPN penalty below a given value and/or
the required LO mitigation bandwidth to limit the EEPN impact below a given OSNR penalty. It
is shown that the penalty due to EEPN in a given system can be estimated by

Penalty  10  log10 1  OSNRref _ inband  EVM EEPN

2
 (5.6)
CHAPTER 5. LASER FREQUENCY NOISE IMPACT ON … 47

Where OSNRref _ inband refers to the OSNR needed to achieve a certain BER for a given modulation

format and system configuration without EEPN while the squared error vector magnitude
definition can be found in Paper VIII. The required linedwith for a given system specification to
limit the EEPN influence below a given penalty p (dB) is given by Paper VIII

p

1  10 10
Tolerable Linewidth  2 (5.7)
   2  L  Baudrate  OSNRref _ inband

Where OSNRref _ inband is as defined as for the previous equation, L indicates the fiber length,

Baudrate is the signal baud rate and  2 is the fiber dispersion parameter. Similarly, the required

mitigation bandwidth to limit the EEPN influence in systems employing Lorentzian linewidth
lasers having LW of linewidth below a certain penalty level p  dB  is given by Paper VIII

  1  10 10  

p

Mitigation Bandwidth  LW  tan  1   (5.8)

2  OSNRref _ inband  
 

The validation of the presented design parameter formulas through simulations and experimentally
can be found in Paper XIV. Figure 5.4 illustrates the experimental validation of the mitigation
bandwidth formula for a 28 Gbaud 16-QAM transmission over 520 km of SSMF fiber received
with an 8 MHz emulated LO laser with different fcutoff values. It is observed how the predicted
EEPN penalty closely matches with that obtained experimentally.

Figure 5.4: (a) High Pass filtered FN-PSD of the 8 MHz LO laser for different cut-offs, (b) BER vs. OSNR
for 28 Gbd 16-QAM after 520 km of fiber and 8 MHz LO laser with different cut-off frequencies (c) OSNR
penalty (@ FEC limit=3.8e-3) vs. cut-off frequency
48 CHAPTER 5. LASER FREQUENCY NOISE IMPACT ON …

5.2 Equalization enhanced phase noise in dispersion-unmanaged coherent systems

employing lasers with general non-white frequency noise spectrum
The received signal in the most common coherent optical system configuration where dispersion
is digitally compensated at the receiver side can be written as Paper XV

 kf ' kf ,mean n   res ,n ' j  t  kf  n  

 '
kf  ,mean


r '  t     cn  h  t  nTs   
  
jk f ' 2  f2,mean n  2 f ' f ,mean n  
j 2  f ' t  f ,mean n t 
 

e e (5.9)
Tx


   ,LO
X f e df '

ps
n 


In this case, Xres, LO,n  f '  corresponds to the LO laser frequency spectrum due to fluctuations around

the mean frequency f ,mean  n  over the observation period  . We define the observation period as

the channel memory (CM) defined as the pulse broadening after passing through the dispersive
fiber which for a Nyquist pulse shaped signal with a given Rolloff factor
 CM
  k  Baudrate  1  Rolloff   [82]. Therefore, at reception, the received pulse observes the

phase noise of the LO laser over a period equivalent to the CM. It is observed from eq. 5.9 that the
received signal experiences a time delay corresponding to the mean frequency of the LO laser over
the  CM period of time. The implications of this analysis are qualitatively depicted in Figure 5.5.
This figure illustrates a train of an on-off encoded Nyquist pulse shaped pulses (pulses depicted in
blue) after passing through a dispersive fiber (pulses depicted in red) and

Figure 5.5: Qualitative representation of the phenomenon. The envelope of On-Off keying encoded train
of Nyquist pulses after the electrical transmitter is shown in blue. The dispersed pulse train after optical
modulation and transmission over fiber is shown in red. The phase of the LO laser is shown in black. The
received pulse train envelope after EDC is shown in green superimposed with the transmitted and dispersed
pulse train neglecting the latency of the fiber. AWG: Arbitrary Waveform Generator, LD (Tx): Laser Diode
(Transmitter), OM: Optical Modulator, LD (LO): Laser Diode (Local Oscillator), Coh. Rx.: Coherent
Receiver, EDC: Electronic Dispersion Compensation, DSP: Digital Signal Processing.
CHAPTER 5. LASER FREQUENCY NOISE IMPACT ON … 49

after chromatic dispersion compensation (pulses depicted in green). The received pulses are
depicted for three different reception scenarios corresponding to the utilization of three LO lasers
having different sinusoidal phase noise characteristics. In the first case, for depiction, the LO laser
does not contain phase noise fluctuations and the transmitted pulses can perfectly be recovered.
This can be observed from eq. 5.9 as the f ,mean over the observation period and the residual

fluctuations across it f ' are zero. In the second case, the LO phase noise fluctuations are slower
than the channel memory and the recovered pulses experience a time delay proportional to the
slope of the phase of the LO laser over the observation period as predicted by eq. 5.9. In the third
case, the phase noise fluctuations over the broadened pulse are faster than the CM and the
recovered pulse after chromatic dispersion compensation is impaired by intra- and inter-symbol
kf '
interference. The intra- and inter-symbol interference can be observed from the term in eq.

5.9. When both cases of slow and fast phase noise fluctuations coexist, both timing drift, timing
jitter and inter and intra symbol interference will be present.
The frequency noise spectrum of the LO laser can be divided into different regimes to separately
study their impact on the system performance as illustrated in Figure 5.6. The first frequency noise
regime corresponds to those frequencies below the timing recovery bandwidth f  1 /  TR . In this
regime, the time delay due to the slow frequency fluctuations of the laser can

Figure 5.6: Regime segmentation of the frequency noise spectrum. CPR tolerance : Carrier Phase Recovery
tolerance, 1/τTR : Timing Recovery Bandwidth, τCM : Dispersion Channel Memory, f cutoff : Cut off
frequency.
50 CHAPTER 5. LASER FREQUENCY NOISE IMPACT ON …

be tracked by the timing recovery algorithm and the received signal remains only impaired by
phase noise from the transmitting and LO lasers. The next frequency regime corresponds to
frequency fluctuations faster than the timing recovery bandwidth but slower than the CM
1 /  TR  f  1 /  CM . In this case, the received signal is impaired with timing error and inter-symbol

interference apart from phase noise. Frequency fluctuations faster than the CM translate into inter-
and intra-symbol interference which after a certain f cutoff value, its impact on the system

performance can be considered negligible. The reason for this is that the EEPN phenomena is
weighted by a X res
, LO factor as seen in eq. 5.9 which falls off inversely proportional to the frequency.

The f cutoff value corresponds to the frequency component after which the EEPN impact on the

system performance can be considered negligible similar to that derived in Paper VIII. The
experimental validation of the presented EEPN theory, frequency noise regimes along with a more
detailed discussion on how to mitigate it can be found in Paper XV, XVI.
Chapter 6
Conclusions and Future Research

In this thesis, we address the issue of carrier phase recovery in coherent optical communication
systems employing high order modulations. Two carrier phase recovery approaches are
traditionally employed for phase noise estimation which mainly rely on the m-th power operation
or on the blind phase search algorithm. The m-th power approach, when applied to high order
modulations, provides a relatively low phase noise tolerance as only a small percentage of the
constellation points can be employed for phase noise estimation. Furthermore, in order to
discriminate between suitable points, an amplitude symbol partitioning process is required which
is a less efficient process for low OSNR values. On the other hand, the blind phase search algorithm
although providing high phase noise tolerance it comes at the expense of a large computational
complexity. The number of required test phases to achieve high phase noise tolerance largely
increases with the modulation order and becomes a burden for its real hardware implementation.
We firstly study the possibility to re-arrange the constellation points in a circularly shaped
constellation suitable for carrier phase estimation with the low complex m-th power method. The
low OSNR penalties inherent in C-mQAM constellations compared to traditional Sq-mQAM
constellations might be balanced by its increased phase noise tolerance for phase noise limited
systems. In this context, all constellation points can be used for phase noise estimation which in
turn increases the phase noise tolerance while maintaining a relaxed implementation complexity.
However, the direct utilization of the m-th power method for CPR causes asymmetrical
constellation rotations due to cycle slips which limited the CPR performance in previous studies.
We proposed an adaptive boundaries method to track the asymmetrical constellation rotations
events and adapt to them. Although the proposed method enhances the phase noise tolerance of
the overall scheme, it also increases its implementation complexity. We therefore proposed a
second n-PSK partitioning based CPR scheme for C-mQAM constellations to alleviate this
problem. By partitioning the received symbols in different classes according to its amplitude and

51
52 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

applying a certain rotation to the symbols belonging to some classes, the required m-th power
operation for modulation removal can be halved. In this case, cycle slips result in symmetrical
constellation rotations and any additional method tracking asymmetrical rotations is not required.
The proposed n-PSK partitioning CPR provides different advantages such as enhanced phase noise
tolerance, decreased cycle slip ratio and reduced implementation complexity. The phase noise
tolerance of the proposed method can be further enhanced with a thirdly proposed two-stage n-
PSK partitioning based CPR scheme which overcomes the amplitude partitioning process
limitations. The result of a first n-PSK partitioning stage serves as coarse constellation estimation
for the second stage which uses this information to properly classify symbols with optimal decision
boundaries. Most of the operations required during the second stage have already been performed
in the first stage and can be re-used in the second stage resulting in a low implementation
complexity algorithm. The proposed CPR methods are accompanied with a differential sector
encoding solution for mitigating the impact of cycle slips and a bit mapping for C-mQAM
constellations.
We secondly studied the inherent limitations of the state-of-the-art blind phase search algorithm in
order to increase its achievable phase noise tolerance and to drastically reduce its hardware
implementation complexity. The blind phase search algorithm is the most promising CPR scheme
for high order constellations due to its enhanced phase noise tolerance and scalability to high order
constellations compared to other CPR schemes. We identify quantization noise as the burden
problem in the BPS algorithm for its high performance and low complexity implementation.
Quantization noise is inherent in the BPS algorithm as its phase noise estimator is selected from a
finite set of test phases. We propose a low complex filtering operation, based on a sliding average
filter approach, performed on the BPS phase noise estimator in order to mitigate the impact of
quantization noise. The filter aims to remove the out of band quantization noise while preserving
the information within the estimation band given by the BPS block filter. The phase noise tolerance
of the BPS algorithm can be significantly enhanced with the proposed quantization noise filter.
Alternatively, as the quantization noise increases with the reduction in the number of test phases,
the proposed filter can also be employed to reduce the implementation complexity of the BPS
algorithm. The phase noise tolerance of the conventional BPS can be achieved with a significantly
less number of test phases when employing the proposed quantization noise filter. Therefore,
allowing the method to be practically implementable in real systems with reduced complexity and
CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH 53

power consumption. The findings related to quantization noise in the blind phase search algorithm
also have implications on the design of multi-stage CPR algorithms. In a multi-stage CPR scheme,
the blind phase search algorithm with a reduced number of test phases is preferably employed as
first stage. The phase corrected signal is then fed into a second stage for finer phase estimation and
compensation. However, our findings show that the quantization noise induced during the BPS
stage impacts the performance of subsequent stages and consequently the overall performance of
the multi-stage CPR scheme. Employing the proposed F-BPS algorithm or a proper multi-stage
CPR design as provided in this thesis can mitigate the quantization noise induced after the BPS
stage increasing its achievable performance and reducing its implementation complexity.
In systems where dispersion is compensated digitally after reception in the DSP module, the phase
noise arising from the local oscillator is shown to cause an enhanced noise commonly known as
equalization enhanced phase noise. The EEPN findings presented in this thesis relate to the origin
and impact of EEPN in coherent optical systems. It is shown that the frequency noise spectrum of
the LO laser can be divided into different regimes as they cause different impairments in the
systems. Low frequency noise components are proved to cause symbol time displacement which,
with the increase in the noise frequency fluctuations, it translates into timing error and inter and
intra symbol interference.
The findings presented in this thesis can be further enhanced by studying the impact of the
proposed solutions on different modules that compose an optical transceiver or under different
transmission scenarios. For instance, it is shown that C-mQAM constellations can enhance the
phase noise tolerance while reducing the computational complexity of the CPR module. However,
further studies related to the suitability of these constellations for FEC are needed (LLR
calculations, non-gray map coding impact on FEC etc). Furthermore, C-mQAM constellations
might be more susceptible to the DAC bit resolution, fiber nonlinearities amongst others and a
more in-depth study addressing these issues is also needed. The proposed F-BPS CPR scheme
applied to C-mQAM constellations would likely enhance the phase noise tolerance at low
implementation complexity levels. Its performance versus implementation complexity tradeoff
compared to the V&V based algorithms presented in this thesis are also of interest. In order to
maintain a low complexity implementation of the proposed quantization filter in the F-BPS CPR
scheme, a low complex sliding average filter was employed. However, other filter implementations
such as Wiener might be employed to enhance the phase noise tolerance of the scheme. Therefore,
54 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

further studies addressing the compromise between the quantization filter complexity and the
phase noise tolerance increase might be of interest for future high phase noise tolerant systems.
Chapter 7
Summary of the Original Works

In this chapter, the publications included in the thesis are summarized along with a description of
the author’s contribution.
Paper I: J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, A. Kakkar, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz, G. Jacobsen,
S. Popov, "Adaptive Boundaries Scheme for Cycle-Slip Mitigation in C-mQAM
Coherent Systems," IEEE PTL, 27(20), 2154-2157 (2015).
In Paper I, we state the basic limitations of the Viterbi and Viterbi carrier phase recovery (CPR) in
asymmetrical C-mQAM constellations due to cycle slips. We propose a new CPR and differential
decoding schemes to alleviate this problem. The phase noise tolerance of the new proposed schemes
for these constellations is evaluated and compared with state-of-the-art CPR schemes for
conventional square mQAM constellations.
Contributions: original idea, developing the simulation setup, carrying out the simulations and
writing the manuscript.
Paper II: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz, M. Iglesias
Olmedo, G Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Carrier Phase Recovery Algorithms for
Coherent Optical Circular mQAM Systems,” IEEE/OSA J. Lightwave Technol.
34(11), 2717-2723 (2016).
In Paper II, we propose a new, low complex and high phase noise tolerant CPR scheme for C-mQAM
constellations based on the normalized Viterbi and Viterbi approach. We evaluate the reduction in
computational complexity of the proposed scheme compared to state-of-the-art CPR schemes in
terms of number of required real multipliers and real adders for its physical implementation. We
prove through simulations that similar phase noise tolerance compared to state-of-the-art CPR
schemes can be achieved with a drastic reduction in computational complexity.
Contributions: original idea, developing the simulation setup, carrying out the simulations and
writing the manuscript.

55
56 CHAPTER 7. SUMMARY OF THE ORIGINAL WORKS

Paper III: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, M. Iglesias Olmedo, O. Ozolins, F.

Da Ros, M. Piels, R. Schatz, D. Zibar, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Two-Stage n-PSK
Partitioning Carrier Phase Recovery Scheme for Circular mQAM Coherent
Optical Systems,” Photonics. 3(2), 37 (2016).
In Paper III, we report on a novel CPR scheme for C-mQAM constellations outperforming state-of-
the-art CPR schemes with a low complexity implementation. The proposed scheme is validated
through simulations and experimentally in a 28-Gbaud C-16QAM back-to-back transmission system
and compared to state-of-the-art schemes.
Contributions: original idea, design and carrying out the simulations and experiments and writing
the manuscript.
Paper IV: J. Rodrigo Navarro, M. I. Olmedo, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz,
G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, D. Zibar, “Phase Noise Tolerant Carrier Recovery
Scheme for 28 Gbaud Circular 16QAM,” in Proc. of ECOC 2015 (OSA/IEEE,
2015), paper Mo.4.3.5.
In Paper IV we experimentally validate our proposed CPR scheme in Paper II in a 28-Gbaud C-
6QAM back-to-back transmission system and compare its performance against conventional CPR
schemes for square 16QAM CPR schemes.
Contributions: original idea, design and carrying out the experiments and writing the manuscript.
Paper V: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, A. Udalcovs,
S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “Blind phase search with angular quantization noise
mitigation for efficient carrier phase recovery,” MDPI Photonics, to appear.
In Paper V we state the basic limitation of the state-of-the-art BPS algorithm for CPR which limits
its achievable performance and implementation complexity. We show the inherent high frequency
noise enhancement of the algorithm due to its angle discretization nature and propose a method to
mitigate it. The performance of the proposed solution is evaluated experimentally for a 28-Gbaud
64QAM signal along with a discussion on its implementation complexity reduction factor.
Contributions: original idea, developing the simulation setup, carrying out the simulations and
writing the manuscript.
Paper VI: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, F. Nordwall,
H. Louchet, S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “High Performance and Low Complexity.
CHAPTER 7. SUMMARY OF THE ORIGINAL WORKS 57

Carrier Phase Recovery Schemes for 64-QAM Coherent Optical Systems,” in

OFC 2017, (OSA, 2017), paper W2A.53.
In paper VI we experimentally validate our proposed CPR scheme in Paper V in a 28-Gbaud 64QAM
constellation to corroborate an increase in performance compared to state-of-the-art BPS algorithm.
We also propose and experimentally evaluate a novel multi-stage CPR scheme for high order mQAM
constellations.
Contributions: original idea, design and carrying out experiments and writing the manuscript.
Paper VII: J. Rodrigo Navarro, A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, A. Udalcovs, R. Schatz,
S. Popov, G Jacobsen, “Design of Multi-Stage Carrier Phase Recovery Schemes
for high order Coherent Optical mQAM Systems,” J. Lightwave Technol.,
submitted.
Based on the results from Paper V we, in Paper VII, study the impact of the high frequency noise
enhancement arising from the conventional BPS algorithm in multi-stage CPR schemes. We propose
the design guidelines for a high phase noise tolerant and low complexity multi-stage CPR scheme
for high order mQAM constellations. We propose three new multi-stage CPR schemes and validate
them experimentally in a 28-Gbaud 64QAM back-to-back transmission system to corroborate an
increase in phase noise tolerance with a lower implementation complexity.
Contributions: original idea, design and carrying out the simulations and experiments and writing
the manuscript.
Paper VIII: A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, H. Louchet, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, "Comprehensive Study of Equalization-Enhanced Phase
Noise in Coherent Optical Systems," IEEE/OSA J. Lightwave Technol. 33(23),
4834-4841 (2015).
In paper VIII we derive the statistical properties of the equalization enhanced phase noise and show
its resemblance to multi-path fading in wireless communication systems. We derive the closed-form
expressions for the maximum tolerable linewidth or minimum mitigation bandwidth for a given
system specification for the system designer based on the findings from Paper X.
Contributions: original idea, design of simulation setup and writing the manuscript.
Paper IX A. Kakkar, R. Schatz, X. Pang, J. Rodrigo Navarro, H. Louchet, O. Ozolins, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, "Impact of local oscillator frequency noise on coherent
optical systems with electronic dispersion compensation," Opt. Express 23(9),
58 CHAPTER 7. SUMMARY OF THE ORIGINAL WORKS

11221-11226 (2015).
In paper IX we show, with a frequency domain analysis, that the EEPN is caused by the non-linear
intermixing between the dispersed signal and the frequency noise of the local oscillator. We show
through simulations that the transmission penalty is mainly due to the slow optical frequency
fluctuations of the local oscillator. We prove that, by mitigating the low frequency noise of the local
oscillator, the transmission penalty can be reduced.
Contributions: original idea, design of simulation setup and writing the manuscript.
Paper X A. Kakkar, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, R. Schatz, J. Rodrigo Navarro, H. Louchet, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, “A Path to Use Large Linewidth LO in 28 Gbd 16-QAM
Metro Links”, in Proc. of ECOC 2015 (OSA/IEEE, 2015), paper Tu.3.4.6.
In paper X we experimentally demonstrate for a 28-Gbaud 16QAM that the EEPN penalty arises
mainly from the low frequency noise of the local oscillator and that its mitigation drastically
improves the system performance.
Contributions: original idea, design of the experimental setup, carrying out the experiments and
writing the manuscript.
Paper XI A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, H. Louchet, G.
Jacobsen, S. Popov, "Mitigation of EEPN in Coherent Optical Systems With
Low-Speed Digital Coherence Enhancement," IEEE PTL, 27(18), 1942-1945
(2015).
In paper XI we present a low complexity method to mitigate the EEPN in coherent optical systems.
We show that the method is implementable with a low speed DCE front end and a simple digital
linear interpolator.
Contributions: original idea, design of simulation setup and writing the manuscript.
Paper XII A. Kakkar, M. Iglesias Olmedo, O. Ozolins, J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, R.
Schatz, H. Louchet, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Overcoming EEPN in Coherent
Transmission Systems”, in Proc. of CLEO2016 (OSA, 2016), paper SM4F.3.
In paper XII we experimentally demonstrate for a 28-Gbaud 16QAM signal, the effectiveness of a
technique to mitigate EEPN based on digital coherence enhancement.
Contributions: original idea, design of the experimental setup, carrying out the experiments and
writing the manuscript.
CHAPTER 7. SUMMARY OF THE ORIGINAL WORKS 59

Paper XIII A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, H. Louchet, G.

Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Equalization Enhanced Phase Noise in Coherent Optical
Systems with Digital Pre- and Post-Processing,” Photonics 3(2), 12 (2016).
In paper XIII we investigate the source of the EEPN for all possible system implementations with
pre/post DSP. We show that the transmitter or local oscillator lasers are the source of EEPN
depending on the DSP order in the system.
Contributions: original idea, mathematical analyses and writing the manuscript.
Paper XIV A. Kakkar, O. Ozolins, J. Rodrigo Navarro, X. Pang, M. I. Olmedo, R. Schatz,
H. Louchet, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Design of Coherent Optical Systems
Impaired by EEPN”, in Proc. Of OFC2016 (OSA, 2016), paper Tu2A.2.
In Paper XIV we provide, and experimentally validate for a 28-Gbaud 16QAM signal, analytical
formulas for estimating the impact of EEPN in coherent optical transmission systems.
Contributions: original idea, design of the experimental setup, carrying out the experiments and
writing the manuscript.
Paper XV A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, A. Udalcovs,
H. Louchet, S. Popov, G. Jacobsen, “Laser Frequency Noise in Coherent Optical
Systems: Spectral Regimes and Impairments,” in Scientific Reports, vol. 7, Art.
no. 844, Apr. 2017.
In paper XV we analytically derived the influence that a non-white frequency noise spectrum laser
has on coherent optical systems with electronic chromatic dispersion compensation. We show that
the frequency noise in these systems cause symbol displacement in the form of time jitter and/or
inter/intra-symbol interference. We also show that different frequency noise spectrum regimes cause
a different set of impairments which could be reduce by optimizing different DSP algorithms.
Contributions: original idea, design of simulation and experimental setup, carrying out the
experiments and writing the manuscript.
Paper XVI A. Kakkar, J. Rodrigo Navarro, R. Schatz, X. Pang, O. Ozolins, F. Nordwall,
D. Zibar, G. Jacobsen, S. Popov, “Influence of Lasers with Non-White Frequency
Noise on the Design of Coherent Optical Links,” in OFC 2017,
(OSA, 2017, paper Th2A.55.
60 CHAPTER 7. SUMMARY OF THE ORIGINAL WORKS

In paper XVI we experimentally demonstrate the influence that different frequency noise spectrum
regimes have on coherent optical communication systems for a 16/64 28-Gbaud system. We
demonstrate that the low part frequency noise mainly translates to time jitter in these systems.
Contributions: original idea, design of the experimental setup, carrying out the experiments and
writing the manuscript.
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