IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO.

3, MARCH 2004 927

Robustness of DPSK-WDM Systems Against

Nonlinear Polarization Fluctuation
Guo-Wei Lu, Kit Chan, Lian-Kuan Chen, and Chun-Kit Chan

AbstractNonlinear polarization fluctuation (NPF) induced
by cross-phase modulation may severely limit the performance
of wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) systems that employ
polarization-dependent devices. In this letter, we experimentally
investigate and compare the system degradation due to NPF
in 10-Gb/s WDM systems among nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ)-,
return-to-zero (RZ)-ONOFF keying (OOK) and NRZ-, RZ-differ-
ential phase-shift keying (DPSK) modulation formats. The DPSK
format, especially NRZ-DPSK, shows significant enhancement in
input power dynamic range over the OOK format.
Index TermsCross-phase modulation (XPM), differential
phase-shift keying (DPSK), nonlinear polarization fluctuation
(NPF), wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM).
I. INTRODUCTION
except the NRZ-OOK case [4]. In this letter, we theoretically
and experimentally investigate and compare the tolerance
against the NPF with polarization sensitive receiver in WDM
systems using NRZ-, RZ-DPSK and NRZ-, RZ-OOK mod-
ulation formats, respectively. Experimental results show that
NRZ-DPSK and RZ-DPSK modulation formats offer 6.5- and
4.2-dB enhancements in the input power dynamic range in a
10-Gb/s WDM system over the cases using NRZ-OOK and
RZ-OOK formats, respectively.
II. THEORY
The NPF induced by the XPM has been analyzed by using
the Manakov equation [5], [6]. Consider a simple probepump
configuration. Based on the time domain interpretation given in

I N wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) transmission

systems, nonlinear polarization fluctuation (NPF) among
the wavelength channels is induced by cross-phase modulation
[6], the polarization rotation angle of the probe signal around
the pivot induced by the pump signal, in the frequency domain,
can be derived as
(XPM). Such time-varying fluctuation in the polarization state
of each wavelength channel is pattern-dependent and is on the
time scale of a single bit period. Thus, it imposes severe system
degradation in the presence of in-line polarization-sensitive
components. For instance, the capacity of polarization-division (1)
multiplexing [1] and the effectiveness of the compensation
of first-order polarization-mode dispersion [2] were severely where is the normalized electrical power spec-
deteriorated by such NPF. trum of the pump signal, is the nonlinear coupling
Recently, differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) modu- coefficient for probe signal, is the fiber length, is the
lation has attracted much interest for its improved receiver attenuation coefficient, is the relative
sensitivity and enhanced immunity against the effects of fiber walkoff between the two channels, and is the chromatic
nonlinearities. Such constant intensity modulation mitigates dispersion parameter. is the peak power of the pivot given
the nonlinear impairment by reducing the pattern-dependent
by , where and are the
nonlinear effects. It has been shown that DPSK systems, using
nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) and return-to-zero (RZ) coding, can powers of the probe and the pump signals, respectively, and
provide high tolerance to fiber nonlinearities such as XPM is the relative polarization angle between the pump and the
and self-phase modulation [3]. As the signal duty ratio is probe. When , the transfer function
reduced, the peak pulse power increases and so do the XPM can be simplified as
effect and other nonlinear phase noise in WDM systems. Thus,
(2)
NRZ-DPSK modulation outperforms RZ-DPSK in combating
XPM and other nonlinear phase noise. Albeit XPM-induced
penalty for various modulation formats had been discussed, the is equivalent to the transfer function of a low
effect of NPF when accompanied with polarization-dependent pass filter of first order with a cutoff frequency .
devices in the transmission link has not yet been reported, As a result, the NPF effect is caused primarily by low-fre-
quency components of the signal. For conventional fibers with
dB/km, ps nm km and a channel spacing of
Manuscript received September 16, 2003; revised November 17, 2003. This
work was supported in part by a grant from the Research Grants Council of 100 GHz, takes a value of about 540 MHz, which is far below
Hong Kong SAR under Project CUHK4225/00E. the data rate of 10 Gb/s. In order to compare the NPF effect
The authors are with the Department of Information Engineering, the for these four modulation formats, we can simply compare the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong (e-mail:
gwlu1@ie.cuhk.edu.hk). low frequency components of these four modulation formats.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2004.823767 Fig. 1 shows the simulated normalized electrical power spectra
1041-1135/04$20.00 2004 IEEE
928
Fig. 1. Simulated normalized electrical power spectra for RZ-OOK,
NRZ-OOK, NRZ-DPSK, and RZ-DPSK.
of four modulation formats including RZ-, NRZ-OOK and
RZ-, NRZ-DPSK. All four formats are modulated with
psuedorandom binary sequence (PRBS) data and the output
power is kept at 0 dBm. It is found that the NPF effect for these
four modulation formats is
. In Section III, experi-
mental verification of this analysis will be given.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND RESULTS
To study the performance of a WDM system with DPSK
modulation format in the presence of NPF, we employed a
simple probepump two-channel configuration. The polariza-
tion of probe signal was rotated due to nonlinear birefringence
induced by the optical power of the pump signal. Thus, the
polarization state of the probe signal became dependent on the
power of pump signal and its state of polarization (SOP).
Fig. 2 shows the experimental setup for NRZ-DPSK WDM
system. Both the pump and the probe signals, which were
spaced 2.4 nm apart, were combined and phase-modulated with
a 10-Gb/s NRZ PRBS via an optical phase modulator.
The modulated signal was then demultiplexed using an array
waveguide grating (AWG) with 100-GHz channel spacing. At
the output fiber of the AWG port carrying the pump signal, a
piece of fiber with a length of 1.25 km was inserted for data
pattern decorrelation, followed by an optical bandpass filter
to further improve the adjacent channel rejection. The pump
signal was further amplified by a high-power erbium-doped
fiber amplifier (EDFA), and then passed through a variable
optical attenuator (VOA), so that the pump signal power
could be controlled with a large dynamic range of 20 dB. The
polarization controllers, PC3 and PC4, were used to adjust the
relative angle between the SOPs of the pump and the probe
signals. To obtain the maximum NPF, the polarization states
of the probe and the pump signals should be orthogonal to
each other on the Poincar sphere [5], i.e., the relative angle
should be 45 . After combining the probe and the pump signals
with a 10/90 optical coupler, the optical power of the probe
signal at the input of the transmission fiber was measured to be
0 dBm, whereas, the pump signal power was varied from 0 to
IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO. 3, MARCH 2004
20 dBm. The combined signal was then fed into a transmission
fiber link, which consisted of a piece of 40-km standard
single-mode fiber and a piece of 8-km dispersion compensating
fiber, which was used for dispersion compensation. At the
receiving end, a 0.2-nm widely tunable bandpass filter was
used to filter out the probe signal. The DPSK signal on the
probe signal was demodulated by a MachZehnder delayed
interferometer (MZDI) with a relative delay of 94 ps between
the two fiber arms. Besides, a polarization controller and a
polarizer (polarization extinction ratio: 26 dB) were inserted
before the optical receiver, to emulate a polarization-sensitive
device in a transmission link. This polarization controller was
adjusted to give the largest power fluctuation, corresponding to
the worst-case scenario. A control experiment with NRZ-OOK
modulation format was also performed with the optical phase
modulator replaced by a MachZehnder intensity modulator,
and with the MZDI removed at the receiving side. For the
experimental setup for the RZ-OOK and RZ-DPSK WDM
systems, an electronic absorption modulator was employed and
was driven by a 10-GHz sinusoidal wave to generate an RZ
pulse train with 28-ps full-width at half-maximum pulsewidth.
Fig. 3 shows the waveforms measured at the output of the op-
tical receiver, with and without the polarizer in front of it, for
NRZ-OOK [Fig. 3(a) and (b)], NRZ-DPSK [Fig. 3(c) and (d)],
RZ-OOK [Fig. 3(e) and (f)], and RZ-DPSK [Fig. 3(g) and (h)]
modulation formats, respectively. The launched pump signal
power into the fiber was about 20 dBm. It was clearly shown
that, after the signal passed through the polarizer, the XPM-in-
duced polarization fluctuation was translated into intensity fluc-
tuation, on the time scale of a single bit period. Such an effect
was much more severe in the case of OOK format than that in the
DPSK case, for both NRZ [Fig. 3(a)(d)] and RZ [Fig. 3(e)(h)]
coding. Besides, comparing Fig. 3(a)(d) and Fig. 3(e)(h), the
effect was more serious in RZ than NRZ coding scheme, for
both OOK- and DPSK-WDM systems.
To investigate the dependence of system performance on the
pump signal power, we further measured the receiver sensitiv-
ities at a bit-error rate of against different pump signal
powers, for systems using the OOK and DPSK modulation for-
mats, respectively. The corresponding power penalties were de-
picted in Fig. 4. Each of the curves was obtained from the dif-
ference in the measured receiver sensitivities between the cases
with and without the polarizer before the optical receiver. As
shown in Fig. 4, when the pump signal power exceeded a cer-
tain value (9 dBm for RZ-OOK case; 11.5 dBm for NRZ-OOK
case; 13.2 dBm for NRZ-DPSK case; 18 dBm for DPSK case),
the probe signal started suffering from the NPF and, thus, led
to a drastic increase in the power penalty at the receiver. To
compare the tolerance, we define the pump input power range
with the power penalty below 1 dB as the input power dynamic
range. For NRZ cases, it was shown that the NRZ-DPSK format
offered a 6.5-dB enhancement of the pump signal power dy-
namic range over the NRZ-OOK modulation format. While for
RZ cases, a 4.2-dB enhancement was obtained for RZ-DPSK
over RZ-OOK. This demonstrated that the XPM-induced NPF
could be effectively mitigated by using the NRZ- or RZ-DPSK
modulation format in WDM systems, and that the difference
between DPSK and OOK modulation formats decreased with
LU et al.: ROBUSTNESS OF DPSK-WDM SYSTEMS AGAINST NPF
Fig. 2. Experimental setup for NRZ-DPSK WDM system. MOD: modulator. PC: polarization controller. AWG: arrayed waveguide grating. ODL: optical delay
line. BPF: bandpass filter.
Fig. 3. Received bit patterns at the pump signal power of 20 dBm (a), (c), (e),
(g) without and (b), (d), (f), (h) with polarizer in front of the receiver in the case
of NRZ-OOK, NRZ-DPSK, RZ-OOK, and RZ-DPSK WDM systems.
decreasing duty ratio. Meanwhile, for the DPSK cases, it was
shown that the NRZ-DPSK format offered a 4.8-dB enhance-
ment over RZ-DPSK, while for the OOK cases, a 2.5-dB en-
hancement was shown for NRZ-OOK over RZ-OOK. This also
demonstrated that NRZ coding outperformed RZ coding in the
presence of the NPF, and that the difference between NRZ and
RZ coding in DPSK was larger than that in OOK modulation
format. The quantitative relation of the tolerance difference be-
tween these modulation formats against the NPF agreed well
with the analysis result in previous section, and the qualitative
results from the waveforms in Fig. 3.
IV. SUMMARY
We have experimentally investigated the performance
degradation induced by NPF in a 10-Gb/s WDM system with
polarization sensitive receiver for RZ-, NRZ-OOK and RZ-,
NRZ-DPSK modulation formats. Experimental results showed
that the input power dynamic range was enhanced by 2.5,
4.2, and 9 dB, respectively, for the NRZ-OOK, RZ-DPSK,
929
Fig. 4. Power penalty as a function of the pump signal power with polarization
sensitive receiver for DPSK-WDM and OOK-WDM systems.
and NRZ-DPSK cases over the RZ-OOK case. The result
demonstrated the robustness of DPSK-WDM against NPF.
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