Experimental investigation of 126-Gb/s 6PolSKQPSK signals

We experimentally generate 28-GBd 6-ary polarization-shift keying quadrature phase-shift keying (6PolSK-QPSK) signals by utilizing a high-speed 4-channel digital-to-analog converter and an integrated dualpolarization I/Q modulator. In WDM transmission experiments over up to 4800 km standard single-mode fiber, we compare the performance of 126- Gb/s 6PolSK-QPSK and 112-Gb/s polarization-division multiplexing (PDM) QPSK signals. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of applying an inner Reed-Solomon RS(511,455) forward error correction code in order to correct burst errors due to the anti-Gray mapping of 6PolSK-QPSK.