Pulse-grouping transmission of optical quadrature phase-shift keying signals with time diversity multiple-input and multiple-output detection and processing

We investigate an optical pulse-overlap transmission scheme where the orthogonal condition between neighbor pulses is violated. The interferences between the grouped optical pulses are mitigated at the optical coherent receiver with time diversity multiple-input and multiple-output-based digital signal processing. Numerical simulation investigates the performance of 50% return-to-zero (RZ)-quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signals, where up to four pulses are overlapped and grouped for per pulse period. In the experiment demonstration, two 50% RZ-QPSK signals are combined with different time offset between neighbor pulses, and the Q-performance as a function of optical-signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) is compared on each pulse channel basis, with minimum OSNR penalty of only 1-dB compared to the single pulse transmission. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)