Impact of nonlinear phase noise to DPSK signals: experimental verification of a simplified theoretical model

To simplify the analysis, the performance of differential phase-shift-keying signals with nonlinear phase noise is usually calculated for receiver with an optical matched filter. With a special single-span experimental setup to isolate the contribution from nonlinear phase noise, the measured signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) penalty is within /spl plusmn/0.15 dB of the theoretical results in the range of SNR penalty less than 1.5 dB.