Joint Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation for Chromatic-Dispersion Compensation in ASK-DPSK Modulation Format

Abstract—We determine the fundamental impairment mecha-nism in the chromatic-dispersion (CD)-limited hybrid amplitude shift keying (ASK)–differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) modu-lation format and propose the employment of joint maximum like-lihood sequence estimation (J-MLSE) for CD compensation to ex-tend the transmission reach of such format. We find that it is not the intrasubchannel interference of the ASK or DPSK subchannel but the interaction between these two subchannels that limits the transmission distance. Therefore, electronic equalization of the two subchannels separately cannot improve the overall CD tolerance of the ASK-DPSK signal. J-MLSE, however, exploits the correlation information between the detected ASK and DPSK signals and is numerically shown to improve the CD tolerance of the ASK-DPSK signal significantly. Index Terms—Amplitude modulation, electronic equalization, phase modulation. I