Which Is The Most Power-Efficient Modulation Format In Optical Links?

By exploiting the electromagnetic wave's four-dimensional signal space, we find that for the additive white Gaussian noise channel, the modulation format with best sensitivity to be an 8-level format with 1.76 dB asymptotic gain over BPSK, for uncoded optical transmission with coherent detection. Low-complexity modulators are presented for the format, as well as an interpretation in terms of quantum-limited sensitivity. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America