A flexible decision-aided maximum likelihood phase estimation in hybrid QPSK/OOK coherent optical WDM systems

Although decision-aided (DA) maximum likelihood (ML) phase estimation (PE) algorithm has been investigated intensively, block length effect impacts system performance and leads to the increasing of hardware complexity. In this paper, a flexible DA-ML algorithm is proposed in hybrid QPSK/OOK coherent optical wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems. We present a general cross phase modulation (XPM) model based on Volterra series transfer function (VSTF) method to describe XPM effects induced by OOK channels at the end of dispersion management (DM) fiber links. Based on our model, the weighted factors obtained from maximum likelihood method are introduced to eliminate the block length effect. We derive the analytical expression of phase error variance for the performance prediction of coherent receiver with the flexible DA-ML algorithm. Bit error ratio (BER) performance is evaluated and compared through both theoretical derivation and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. The results show that our flexible DA-ML algorithm has significant improvement in performance compared with the conventional DA-ML algorithm as block length is a fixed value. Compared with the conventional DA-ML with optimum block length, our flexible DA-ML can obtain better system performance. It means our flexible DA-ML algorithm is more effective for mitigating phase noise than conventional DA-ML algorithm.