Relative impact of channel symbol rate on transmission capacity

Through C+L band transmission experiments and theoretical modeling, we investigate the impact of channel symbol rate (30, 40, 60, and 85 GBd) on the performance of data center interconnection, metropolitan, and core network distances. Two different transponder architectures are investigated: (a) single-carrier receiver and (b) multi-carrier receiver, where multiple subcarriers are received together in a single wideband receiver. The architectures of both receivers experience a reduction in the achievable information rate as the channel symbol rate increases due to dominating transceiver noise; this holds over all tested transmission distances. However, the multi-carrier receiver shows a weaker performance dependency on symbol rate, as receiver-related impairments dominate. When testing the single-carrier receiver after 630 km, we find that by increasing the channel symbol rate from 40 to 85 GBd, gross capacity decreases by 16%; however, the required number of transceivers to fill the transmission window decreases by 52%. Using the multi-carrier receiver reduces receiver count further. This potentially impacts the cost and complexity of deploying fully loaded transmission systems.