Performance Evaluation of WDM Channel Transmission for Probabilistic Shaping With Partial Multilevel Coding

Abstract

We propose partial multilevel coding (MLC) for optical communications with probabilistic shaping (PS), which improves the signal-to-noise ratio performance and makes information rates more adaptable, while reducing the power consumed by forward error correction. We designed simulation models of partial-MLC and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) implementing the same low-density parity-check code to have almost the same transmission performance in an additive white Gaussian noise channel. The estimated power consumption of the partial-MLC model was about 38~39% lower than that of the BICM model. Next, we evaluated the effect of nonlinearity on fiber wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) channels in numerical simulations. The results showed that both models behaved similarly regardless of nonlinear noise, illustrating the usefulness of MLC with PS for optical transmissions on WDM channels.