Single-carrier 1-Tb/s PDM-16QAM transmission using high-speed InP MUX-DACs and an integrated OTDM modulator

Abstract

We generated a 1-Tb/s single-carrier PDM-16QAM signal using a single optical modulator with external PDM emulation. To achieve the high symbol rate of 125 Gbaud, we used high-speed InP MUX-DAC modules, each consisting of six 2:1 MUXs and a 6-bit DAC in a single package, and an integrated optical modulator, which contains a generator of two orthogonal CSRZ pulse trains for spectrally efficient OTDM followed by IQ modulators for each tributary. The signal was received and demodulated without using any time-domain demultiplexing. Transmission over 80-km SSMF was demonstrated.