Reconfigurable optical inter-channel interference mitigation for spectrally overlapped QPSK signals using nonlinear...

A reconfigurable all-optical inter-channel interference (ICI) mitigation method is proposed for an overlapped channel system that avoids the need for multi-channel detection and channel spacing estimation. The system exhibits a 0.5-dB implementation penalty compared to a single-channel baseline system. Experiments using a dual-carrier QPSK overlapped system with both 20G-baud and 25G-baud under different channel spacing conditions evaluate the performance of the method. Improved signal constellation and receiver sensitivity demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. This results in over 4-dB OSNR of benefit when the system Q-factor reaches a forward error correction (FEC) threshold of 8.5 dB under less-than-baudrate channel spacing conditions.