Evaluation of four-dimensional nonbinary LDPC-coded modulation for next-generation long-haul optical transport networks

Leveraging the advanced coherent optical communication technologies, this paper explores the feasibility of using four-dimensional (4D) nonbinary LDPC-coded modulation (4D-NB-LDPC-CM) schemes for long-haul transmission in future optical transport networks. In contrast to our previous works on 4D-NB-LDPC-CM which considered amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise as the dominant impairment, this paper undertakes transmission in a more realistic optical fiber transmission environment, taking into account impairments due to dispersion effects, nonlinear phase noise, Kerr nonlinearities, and stimulated Raman scattering in addition to ASE noise. We first reveal the advantages of using 4D modulation formats in LDPC-coded modulation instead of conventional two-dimensional (2D) modulation formats used with polarization-division multiplexing (PDM). Then we demonstrate that 4D LDPC-coded modulation schemes with nonbinary LDPC component codes significantly outperform not only their conventional PDM-2D counterparts but also the corresponding 4D bit-interleaved LDPC-coded modulation (4D-BI-LDPC-CM) schemes, which employ binary LDPC codes as component codes. We also show that the transmission reach improvement offered by the 4D-NB-LDPC-CM over 4D-BI-LDPC-CM increases as the underlying constellation size and hence the spectral efficiency of transmission increases. Our results suggest that 4D-NB-LDPC-CM can be an excellent candidate for long-haul transmission in next-generation optical networks.