A Comprehensive Study on Crosstalk Suppression Techniques in Fiber Optical Parametric Amplifier by Modulation Format

With the presence of multiple-WDM input signals, ON-OFF keying (OOK)-modulated signals suffer from crosstalk in fiber optical parametric amplifier (OPA) due to cross-gain modulation (XGM) and four-wave mixing (FWM) effects. We demonstrated substantial crosstalk suppression in one-pump OPA by using return-zero differential phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) modulation format, which with its pattern-independent amplitude and subunity duty cycle would be effective in reducing the XGM and FWM effects significantly. By using the RZ-DPSK format, the power penalty was improved by at least 0.8 dB over RZ-OOK, non-RZ (NRZ)-DPSK, and NRZ-OOK formats with four 10 Gb/s channels, separated by 200 GHz spacing. With eight 10 Gb/s channels separated by 100 GHz spacing, a Q-factor penalty of the RZ-DPSK signal was reduced by 2.4 dB compared to RZ-OOK counterparts.