Increasing the transmission capacity of coherence multiplexed communication systems by using differential detection

We experimentally verify the impact of optical beat noise on a coherence-multiplexed optical communication system. We then show that optical beat noise can be significantly reduced, and transmission capacity increased, by using differential detection. We demonstrate transmission at low bit error rate of four coherence multiplexed channels, each having a capacity of 1 Gb/s, over 8 km of dispersion-shifted fiber. This is the highest capacity demonstration to date for any code-division multiplexing scheme.