Tool Used: OptSim
This application note is a case study of two high-speed coherent WDM systems. A comparison is made between PM-QPSK and PM-16QAM, two of the most popular choices for the modulation formats in coherent fiber optic systems, at a baud rate of 32GBps per channel. Each WDM system has a channel count of five (can be scaled to a desired channel count) and the wavelengths are on a 50GHz grid. The OptSim project layouts are shown in Fig. 1.