Comparative analysis of inter-channel nonlinear distortions from PM-QPSK and PS-QPSK interferers

Polarization-Switched QPSK (PS-QPSK) can offer a higher tolerance to fiber nonlinearities than Polarization Multiplexed QPSK (PM-QPSK), albeit with 25% loss of spectral efficiency. While improved performance has been shown experimentally, a thorough study of inter-channel nonlinearities in these systems has not been performed. Here we numerically study two separate manifestations of cross phase modulation (XPM) generated by these two formats; XPM-induced phase noise (XPM-PN) and XPM-induced polarization crosstalk (XPM-PC). We find that in both dispersion-compensated (DC) and dispersion uncompensated (DUC) systems, greater XPM-PN is generated by PS-QPSK interferers, whereas greater XPM-PC is generated by PM-QPSK interferers. While the combined effect of these distortions provides similar penalties in either system, this finding may help inform the design of efficient nonlinear equalizers.