Cost-effective 100Gbps Optical Modulation Format for Metro Networks

When commercialized, the increase of the per-channel data rate to 100Gbps in transport systems is expected to experience strong demand within both long-haul and metro networks. We explore a modulation format that combines phase- and amplitude-shift keying towards finding a cost-effective higher-speed transport solution for metro networks, significantly reducing the cost-premium associated with several specific solutions being designed for long-haul networks and reducing the wait associated with decreases in component pricing. The respective hardware requirements and possible implementations of the proposed format are discussed, and we present numerical simulation results to explore sensitivities to several system parameters, namely chromatic dispersion tolerances, PMD tolerances, and OSNR requirements.