Investigation of 64-QAM optical modulator with paralleled dual-drive MZMs driven by binary signals

High-order Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is a promising approach to increase the spectral efficiency of wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) transmission. However, the optical implementation is still challenging. A customized modulator is proposed for 64-QAM signal generation, and its performance is investigated in detail.