Impact of nonlinear phase noise on direct-detection DQPSK WDM systems

The performance degradation of differential quadrature phase-shift keying (DQPSK) wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) systems due to self-phase modulation (SPM)- and cross-phase modulation (XPM)-induced nonlinear phase noise is evaluated in this letter. The XPM-induced nonlinear phase noise is approximated as Gaussian distribution and summed together with the SPM-induced nonlinear phase noise. We demonstrate that 10-Gb/s systems, whose walkoff length is larger than 40-Gb/s systems', are more sensitive to XPM-induced nonlinear phase noise than 40-Gb/s systems. Furthermore, DQPSK WDM systems show lower tolerance to both SPM- and XPM-induced nonlinear phase noise than differential phase-shift keying WDM systems.