Impact of Channel Plan and Dispersion Map on Hybrid DWDM Transmission of 42.7-Gb/s DQPSK and 10.7-Gb/s OOK on 50-GHz Grid

We investigate experimentally the performance of 42.7-Gb/s return-to-zero (RZ) differential quadrature phase-shift-keyed (DQPSK) channels in a dense wavelength-division-multiplexed transmission system having 10.7-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) on-off keyed (OOK) channels. Cross-phase modulation (XPM) from the OOK channels is found to be a dominating nonlinear penalty source for copropagating DQPSK channels in a dispersion-managed transmission link with multiple standard single-mode fiber spans. It is also found that the XPM penalty strongly depends on channel occupancy and residual dispersion per span (RDPS). Large RDPS effectively mitigates XPM even for the worst-case occupancy where a 42.7-Gb/s RZ-DQPSK channel is amidst several 10.7-Gb/s NRZ-OOK channels on a 50-GHz channel grid.