Performance degradation of phase-modulated systems due to nonlinear phase noise

The error probability is calculated for phase-modulated systems with nonlinear phase noise. Using the assumption that the phase of amplifier noise and nonlinear phase noise are independent of each other, the error probability and penalty are calculated for both phase-shift keying (PSK) and differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) systems. The mean nonlinear phase shift must be less than about 1.00 and 0.63 rad for a penalty less than 1 dB for PSK and DPSK systems, respectively.