Comparison of RZ Versus NRZ Pulse Shapes for Optical Duobinary Transmission

This paper presents an experimental study and comparison of return-to-zero (RZ) versus nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) pulse shapes for optical duobinary systems. Surprisingly, and contrary to the case of on-off keying, we find the NRZ pulse shape to be superior, compared with RZ, for duobinary transmission in all the cases that were studied, including systems that are limited by amplified-spontaneous-emission noise, fiber chromatic dispersion, and self-phase modulation.