Experimental Demonstration of Reduced Complexity 43-Gb/s RZ-DQPSK Rate-Tunable Receiver

We demonstrate an alternative differential quadrature phase-shift keying (DQPSK) receiver offering reduced complexity through sharing of hardware in the
I/Q
demodulation paths. Demodulation of 43-Gb/s return-to-zero DQPSK is demonstrated without penalty relative to a traditional DQPSK receiver. Rate tuning is demonstrated using a tunable birefringent element.