Phase Noise Characterization and EEPN of a Full C-Band Tunable Laser in Coherent Optical Systems

We perform phase noise characterization of a tunable laser source that is capable of tuning to 103 channels between 1527.6-1568.36 nm with 50 GHz grid spacing between the channels. The measured frequency modulation (FM) noise power spectral density (PSD) is reproduced by simulations in order to investigate the impact of equalization-enhanced phase noise (EEPN) in a coherent transmission system. The simulations are performed on a 30 Gbaud channel with 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) and using pilot-based carrier phase estimation with 3% overhead. By performing extensive system simulations, we show the impact of different accumulated dispersion. Furthermore, we show the possibility to overcome EEPN related penalties by using a local oscillator (LO) with reduced low frequency phase noise or flat FM-noise PSD profiles with lower linewidths. \ua9 1989-2012 IEEE