CF-RZ-DPSK for suppression of XPM on dispersion-managed long-haul optical WDM transmission on standard single-mode fiber

We present a new optical modulation format chirp-free return-to-zero differential phase shift keying (CF-RZ-DPSK), which enables wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) transmission at 10 Gb/s/ch at a channel spacing of 100 GHz over 3000 km without significant impairments due to cross-phase modulation (XPM). A transmitter setup is presented, which allows a simple implementation of CF-RZ-DPSK with two Mach-Zehnder modulators in push-pull operation. The robustness toward XPM is shown theoretically with the help of a simple analytical model for the XPM-induced phase modulation. The superior performance of CF-RZ-DPSK over other modulation formats [RZ-ampfitude shift keying (ASK), nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ)-DPSK, and NRZ-ASK, respectively] is clarified. Finally, simulation results for CF-RZ-DPSK in comparison to RZ-ASK show the superior performance of the newly proposed modulation format in a dense WDM setup.