Digital quadrature amplitude modulation with optimized non-rectangular constellations for 100 Gb/s transmission by a directly-modulated laser.

We study the performance of novel quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations for 100 Gb/s transmission by a directly-modulated laser. Due to the strong nonlinearity of a directly-modulated laser, rectangular constellations suffer a large penalty from their regular spacing between symbols. We present a method for synthesizing irregular constellations which position symbols more efficiently. We will demonstrate the improved performance of these novel constellations over the conventional rectangular constellation as well as the superior performance achievable with digital QAM compared to optimally bit-loaded discrete-multitone modulation.