Cross-Phase Modulation Induced by OOK Channels on Higher-Rate DQPSK and Coherent QPSK Channels

In this paper we show that, in hybrid wavelength division multiplexed systems, the performance of high datatrate QPSK channels impaired by cross-phase modulation (XPM) induced by the lower rate OOK channels can be simply estimated by an extension of a well-known linear model for XPM, and novel analytical expressions of the sensitivity penalty are provided. From such a model we prove that the reported QPSK penalty decrease with QPSK baud rate increase should be attributed to the action of the phase estimation process rather than to the walkoff effect. The model also simply shows how coherent QPSK is more affected by XPM than incoherent DQPSK, and allows to infer that even more impact is expected when the baudrate is further reduced through polarization multiplexing.