TuA4.

4 4:30 PM - 4:45 PM

16-QAM Signal Design and Detection in Presence of Nonlinear Phase Noise

Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, 350 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305. alanlau@stanford. edu, jmk@ee. stanford. edu

Alan Pak Tao Lau and Joseph M. Kahn

Abstract: Constellation design and coherent detection of 16-QAM signals in the presence of nonlinear phase noise are studied. Various decision strategies and phase-noise mitigation techniques are compared in terms of symbol-error rate performance.
1.

Introduction

Optical fiber transmission systems using coherent or differentially coherent detection are subject to impairment by phase noise. Amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from inline amplifiers is a major source of phase noise, and is referred to here as linear phase ntoise. Gordon and Mollenauer [1] showed that signal and ASE can interact via the fiber Kerr nonlinearity to produce nonlinear phase noise (NLPN). Using simplistic models for optical nonlinearities, information theory suggests that spectral efficiencies of several bits/s/Hz might be possible [2]. Modulation schemes encoding multiple bits per symbol are crucial to approaching these limits. In this paper, we study the constellation design and coherent detection of 16-QAM in presence of NLPN, and we evaluate various decision strategies and phase-noise mitigation techniques. We focus on single channel systems where dispersion and multi-channel effects are neglected. In the presence of NLPN, optimal maximum-likelihood decision (ML) boundaries are curved [3], and may be complicated to implement. This has motivated development of NLPN compensation techniques [3], to be used in conjunction with straight-line decision boundaries. 16-QAM Signal Constellation Design We consider a transmission system using 16-QAM to encode 4 bits/symbol. We start with the usual square 16-QAM constellation with points located at Pe 1i(1 4 ), 9P0eip 47), 5pei( tan-l(1/3) ), pei( tan (3)i) and average power Pavg = 5PO. We assume that ideal distributed amplification is employed, allowing us to use the probability density function (pdf) given in [4]. For a signal point located at \Pej0, the pdf of the received signal is given by [4]
2.

fp, ,

(r, =fR()

E Re{Cm(r)edm(0o0)},

(1)

where fR(r) =2re-(r2P/U2)Io(2rP/u72) is the Rice pdf of the received amplitude, cu2 is the total optical noise power such that P/ur2 is the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and Re{.} denotes the real part of a complex number. The Fourier coefficient Cm(r) is given in Ho [4]. Table 1 lists the parameter values used in this paper. 3000 km a 0.25 dB/km 40 GHz ns 1.41 A =c/v 1.55 ,um a 1.2 W-/km Table 1. Parameter values used in this paper.

A\v0pt

For the usual square 16-QAM design, the pdf of the received signal, as well as the corresponding optimal ML decision boundaries are shown in Figure 1 (a) for a low average power Pavg =-13 dBm. The three subsets of signal points (grouped according to their powers) undergo different degrees of phase rotation due to the dependence of NLPN on signal power. The optimal decision regions are somewhat disturbed from the usual rectangular regions that are appropriate in the absence of NLPN. At higher signal power Pay9 7' dBm, the received signal pdf (b) and decision boundaries (c) are distorted into spirals bearing little resemblance to those in the absence of NLPN. In practice, it might be hard to implement the optimal spiral-like decision boundaries. Therefore, we also study system performance using the usual straight-line decision boundaries in presence of NLPN. As a first step, the

1-4244-0927-61071$25.OOIC2007 IEEE

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(a})(b)

(c)

Fig. 1. (a) Received signal pdf and corresponding optimal decision boundaries for Pavg -13 dBm. (b) Received signal pdf and (c) corresponding optimal decision boundaries for Payg = 7 dBm.

initial phases of each of the 16 signal points are adjusted by their mean nonlinear phase shift such that the location of the modes of the conditional pdfs coincide with those in a linear 16-QAM system. This will be referred to as phase pre-compensation and one such example is shown in Figure 2 (a) for Pavg =-1 dBm. In addition, as NLPN is the major limiting factor in system performance, techniques to mitigate phase noise such as designing amplifier gains and spacings [5] or NLPN compensation [3] may be beneficial. We focus on the latter technique, which will be referred to as NLPN post-compensation. The phase of a received signal with power Prec is rotated by an amount b =-yLPrec/2 according to Ho and Kahn [3]. When phase pre-compensation is used with NLPN post-compensation, the resulting pdf is shown in Figure 2 (b) for Pa9g =-1 dBm. The shape of the received pdf is less spiral-like and closer to that of a linear 16-QAM system. With these received signal pdfs, we implement the usual straight-line decision boundaries, which are shown as dashed lines in both Figure 2 (a) and (b). The symbol-error rate (SER) of these schemes together with the SER using the ML decision boundaries without phase pre-compensation and NLPN post-compensation is shown in Figure 2 (c) for various input power levels. At low power levels, all three schemes perform similarly. This is in agreement with expectation, since NLPN is not dominant at low power levels and the ML decision boundaries are close to a rectangular grid. Note that the performance using the ML decision boundaries is optimized at approximately Prec =-3 dBm and degrades at high powers due to the increasing dominance of NLPN. Compared to the ML decision boundaries, the SER with phase pre-compensation is much higher. Phase pre-compensation with NLPN post-compensation significantly reduces the SER and even outperforms ML decision boundaries at low power levels.
10

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i t t i / /
_____

i r I

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. ~

, 0-4 ~~~~~~~~)
1

X-X.r
(a)

I I I (a, (b

- - Maximum likelihood ~~~~ ... Phase pre-comp. 0_ 1Phase pre-comp. with NLPN post-comp.

~~~~~~~~~~1

-13

P -3 (dBm)

(b)

ag(c)

-1 dBm (a) with phase pre-compensation only. (b) With phase preFig. 2. Received pdf for Pyg9 compensation and NLPN post-compensation. The dashed lines represent the straight-line decision boundaries. (c) Symbol error rate as a function of Pavg for a system using the optimal ML decision boundaries, phase pre-comiipensation with anid without NLPN post-comiipensation.

Conclusions and Future work In this paper, we studied 16-QAM constellation design with coherent detection in presence of NLPN. The impact of straight-line decision boundaries with signal phase pre-compensation and NLPN post-compensation on the symbolerror rate performance were quantified.
3.

References
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

J.P. Gordon and L.F. Mollenauer, Opt. Lett. 15, 1351-1353 (1990). PP. Mitra and J.B. Stark, Nature, vol. 411, no. 6841, pp. 1027-1030, (2001). K.-P. Ho and J.M. Kahn, IEEE J. Lightwave Technology, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 779-783, (2004). K.P. Ho, Phase-Modulated Optical Communication Systems, Springer (2005). A.P.T. Lau and J.M. Kahn, IEEE J. Lightwave Technology, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 1334-1341, (2006).

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