Non-data-aided phase noise suppression scheme for CO-OFDM systems

We propose a non-data-aided phase noise compensation technique that overcomes the limitation of the zero-overhead decision-directed (DD) phase noise suppression method in high-order constellations for coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) systems. The proposed technique consists of two equalization stages. First, a blind adaptive phase offset recovery scheme based on high-order statics, called the dispersion minimization de-rotator, is applied to subcarrier symbols to achieve rough correction of the common phase error because of phase noise. Second, the conventional DD phase noise correction scheme is used to remove the residual common phase error. The proposed method effectively compensates phase noise without the help of pilot signals, especially for high-order constellation CO-OFDM systems, as confirmed by our simulation results.