Optimal signal constellation design for ultra-high-speed optical transport in the presence of nonlinear phase noise

Abstract

In this paper, we first describe an optimal signal constellation design algorithm suitable for the coherent optical channels dominated by the linear phase noise. Then, we modify this algorithm to be suitable for the nonlinear phase noise dominated channels. In optimization procedure, the proposed algorithm uses the cumulative log-likelihood function instead of the Euclidian distance. Further, an LDPC coded modulation scheme is proposed to be used in combination with signal constellations obtained by proposed algorithm. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that the LDPC-coded modulation schemes employing the new constellation sets, obtained by our new signal constellation design algorithm, outperform corresponding QAM constellations significantly in terms of transmission distance and have better nonlinearity tolerance.