High-order modulation on a single discrete eigenvalue for optical communications based on nonlinear Fourier transform

In this paper, we experimentally investigate high-order modulation over a single discrete eigenvalue under the nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT) framework and exploit all degrees of freedom for encoding information. For a fixed eigenvalue, we compare different 4 bit/symbol modulation formats on the spectral amplitude and show that a 2-ring 16-APSK constellation achieves optimal performance. We then study joint spectral phase, spectral magnitude and eigenvalue modulation and found that while modulation on the real part of the eigenvalue induces pulse timing drift and leads to neighboring pulse interactions and nonlinear inter-symbol interference (ISI), it is more bandwidth efficient than modulation on the imaginary part of the eigenvalue in practical settings. We propose a spectral amplitude scaling method to mitigate such nonlinear ISI and demonstrate a record 4 GBaud 16-APSK on the spectral amplitude plus 2-bit eigenvalue modulation (total 6 bit/symbol at 24 Gb/s) transmission over 1000 km.