BER-adaptive flexible-format transmitter for elastic optical networks

We propose a new optical transmitter which is capable of changing flexibly the modulation format of the optical signal. By using this transmitterwe can handle and assign various modulation formats: binary phase shift keying (BPSK)quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK)8-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (8QAM)and 16QAM. The proposed transmitter is based on a combination of a dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DD-MZM) and a dual-parallel MZM (DP-MZM) with electrical binary drive signals. DD-MZM is a key element to produce the 8QAM and 16QAM formats where each arm of DD-MZM is driven by independent binary data. This is because we can modulate the amplitude and phase of the optical signal by using a frequency chirp of the modulator when we adjust properly the amplitudes of the electrical drive signals. In additionwe show an algorithm by which the proposed transmitter can intelligently select the modulation format in accordance with the signal quality.