Analysis of BER Degradation Owing to Multiple Crosstalk Channels in Optical QPSK/QAM Signals

Inter-channel crosstalk is one of the limiting factors in multichannel optical systems. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals influenced by multiple crosstalk channels. The field distribution of multiple crosstalk channels in the constellation map is calculated. The BER of the QPSK/QAM signal, onto which the crosstalk light is superimposed, is then evaluated for a varying number of crosstalk channels under the condition that the total crosstalk power is constant. The results quantitatively confirm that as the channel number increases, the BER degradation caused by crosstalk light approaches that caused by Gaussian noise light. It is also confirmed that the degradations caused by crosstalk light and Gaussian light are similar for QAM signals of high-level modulation.