Experimental study and numerical modelling of a 3 × 100G DP-QPSK superchannel

Crosstalk effects are studied experimentally in a DWDM line with 100G DP-QPSK channels at a frequency convergence of the channels (three channels with a frequency separation of 50, 37.5 and 33 GHz) in the C-band. Spans of 100 km in length are used, with the number of spans varying from one to six. The required optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR_R) is determined experimentally for a different number of spans, interchannel intervals and input power. We propose a theoretical model based on the numerical modelling that describes the influence of adjacent channels at a strong convergence. The model is calibrated using the obtained experimental data. Based on the proposed model, we calculate the maximal value of the spectral efficiency in systems with a dense arrangement of 100G DP-QPSK channels (~3.2 bit s^-1 Hz^-1).