Transmission Impairments for 298.2Gbit/s Coherent WDM over 600km of Standard Single Mode Fibre

Coherent wavelength division multiplexing (CoWDM) is a promising technique in order to achieve, in a simple and cost-effective configuration, high information spectral densities (ISD). This paper shows an estimation of the impact of non-linear effects (NLE) and polarisation mode dispersion (PMD) for a CoWDM system using standard single-mode fibre (SSMF), showing that this high ISD system offers similar total reach to a standard WDM system with 42.6Gbit/s NRZ channels. The impact of noise and NLE on a 298.2Gbit/s CoWDM system generated from seven 42.6Gbit/s random data streams (512 and 2⁷-1 bits for simulated and experimental results respectively) was considered .