Demonstration of Record Sensitivity in an Optically Pre-amplified Receiver by Combining PDM-QPSK and 16-PPM with Pilot-Assisted Digital Coherent Detection
06 March 2011
We propose a power-efficient modulation/detection scheme that combines PDM-QPSK and 16-ary-pulse-position-modulation. A record sensitivity of 3.5 photons per bit at BER=1E-3 is experimentally demonstrated at 2.5 Gb/s with digital coherent-detection, outperforming PDM-QPSK by >3 dB.
