Performance study of modulation formats for 10-Gb/s WDM metropolitan area networks

A detailed comparative study of various alternative modulation formats appropriate for wavelength-division-multiplexed metropolitan area networks is performed to evaluate their tolerance to linear impairments such as optical signal-to-noise ratio degradation, chromatic dispersion, crosstalk, and filter concatenation effects. Some of these formats are very tolerant to these impairments and exhibit superior performance compared to conventional nonreturn-to-zero.