Performance analysis of different standard single stage CPE algorithms using MSE

The performance of different standard single-stage carrier phase estimation (CPE) algorithms for multi-level modulation formats is analysed. The analysis is performed by calculating the mean square error (MSE) between the actual and the estimated phase noise. It was observed that the better the performance of an algorithm, the lower will be its MSE value. Moreover, MSE can also be used as an efficient benchmark for finding the optimum averaging window length at a particular value of signal to noise ratio (SNR) and laser linewidth.