Transmission of 100Gb/s Coherent PDM-QPSK over 16x100km of Standard Fiber with allerbium amplifiers

We report on the performance of 100Gb/s coherent non return-to-zero (NRZ-) polarization division multiplexed (PDM-) quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) transmission over 16x100km of standard single mode fibre under constraints of typical transparent terrestrial networks, employing Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifiers. We first evaluate the impact of cross non linear effects onto the performance of 100Gb/s coherent PDM-QPSK signals and we investigate the impact of shifting one of the polarization multiplexed tributaries by half a symbol duration with respect to the other one. Finally we show that this solution is robust against channel-to-channel cross-talk from transparent nodes and does not suffer from performance degradation stemming from co-propagating 40Gb/s channels. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America