Nonlinearity Limitations When Mixing 40-Gb/s Coherent PDM-QPSK Channels With Preexisting 10-Gb/s NRZ Channels

We investigate the penalties onto a 40-Gb/s polarization-division-multiplexing (PDM)-quadrature phase-shift keying caused by PDM, wavelength-division multiplexing and 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero neighbor channels. Besides, we optimize the carrier phase estimation process and introduce bandgaps in the multiplex in order to contain limitations caused by cross nonlinear effects.