40-Gb/s QPSK and 20-Gb/s PSK with inserted pilot symbols using self-homodyne detection

We proposed and experimentally demonstrated 40-Gb/s quadrature phase-shifted keying (QPSK) and 20-Gb/s binary phase-shifted keying (PSK) transmission systems with inserted pilot symbols, using a return-to-zero radio frequency (RZ-RF) driving signal in the transmitter and self-homodyne direct detection in the receiver. Different from other existing homodyne or conventional differential PSK/QPSK systems, the proposed PSK and QPSK modulation formats do not need any complicated pre-coder, post-processor or local oscillator. In the proposed QPSK systems, simultaneous detection of in-phase and quadature components is successfully achieved by using one Mach-Zehnder delay interferometer and following balanced detector, which significantly reduces the system complexity and implementation cost.