| Abstract: | Transmission performances of direct detection‐based 100‐Gb/s modulation formats are investigated and compared for metro area optical networks. The effects of optical signal‐to‐noise ratio sensitivity, chromatic dispersion, cross‐channel nonlinearity, and transmission distance on the performance of differential 8‐ary phase‐shift keying (D8PSK), differential phase‐shift keying plus three‐level amplitude‐shift keying (DPSK+3ASK), and dual‐carrier differential quaternary phase‐shift keying (DC‐DQPSK) are evaluated. The performance of coherent dual‐polarization quadrature phase‐shift keying (DP‐QPSK) with block phase estimation and coherent DP‐QPSK with digital differential detection are also presented for reference. According to our analysis, all three direct detection modulation formats could transmit a 100‐Gb/s signal over several hundred kilometers of a single‐mode fiber link. The results also show that DC‐DQPSK outperforms D8PSK and DPSK+3ASK, and the performance of DC‐DQPSK is comparable to that of coherent DP‐QPSK with digital differential detection. The maximum transmission distance of DC‐DQPSK is over 1,000 km, which is enough distance for metro applications. |
