Unrepeated 200-km transmission of 40-Gbit/s 16-QAM signals using digital coherent receiver.

We demonstrate unrepeated 200-km transmission of 40-Gbit/s 16-QAM signals using a digital coherent receiver, where the decision-directed carrier-phase estimation is employed. The phase fluctuation is effectively eliminated in the 16-QAM system with such a phase-estimation method, when the linewidth of semiconductor lasers for the transmitter and the local oscillator is 150 kHz. Finite-impulse-response (FIR) filters at the receiver compensate for 4,000-ps/nm group-velocity dispersion (GVD) of the 200-km-long single-mode fiber and a part of self-phase modulation (SPM) in the digital domain. In spite of the launched power limitation due to SPM, the acceptable bit-error rate performance is obtained owing to high sensitivity of the digital coherent receiver.