Mitigation of EEPN in Coherent Optical Systems With Low-Speed Digital Coherence Enhancement

A method for mitigating local oscillator (LO) phase noise-induced impairment, also known as equalization-enhanced phase noise, in coherent optical systems is discussed. The method is suitable for real-time implementation and requires hardware with a bandwidth much lower than the signal baud rate, even for a system utilizing conventional semiconductor laser as LO. We evaluate the required parameters like interpolation technique, electrical signal-to-noise ratio at digital coherence enhancement (DCE) front end, for long haul transmission links having quadrature phase shift keying and 16-quadrature amplitude modulation formats. We show that the method can be implemented using a low-speed DCE front end and a simple digital linear interpolator with small (<;1 dB) implementation penalty even in cases that would otherwise result in error floor.