12.2 bit/s/Hz C-band Transmission with High-Gain Low-Complexity 24-Dimensional Geometric Shaping

Multidimensional (MD) modulation formats enable a larger minimum Euclidean distance than conventional two-dimensional formats. As a structured geometric shaping method, MD Voronoi constellations (VCs) avoid the use of look-up tables and can be implemented with low-complexity encoding and decoding algorithms, outperforming quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats in terms of mutual information. However, it is challenging to maintain the shaping gain in a practical system requiring bit-mapping and forward error correction (FEC) coding. By using a hybrid labeling and multilevel coding scheme integrated with soft-decision FEC coding, MD VCs can achieve high shaping gain compared to QAM formats after soft-decision (SD) decoding. In practical systems, transceiver impairments significantly degrade the system performance, especially for high-cardinality constellations. To investigate of performance of high spectral-efficiency (SE) MD VCs, we employ a 24-dimensional (24D) VC with uncoded SE of 8 bit/symbol/dimension-pair to a spectral superchannel spanning the full C-band. Specifically, the 24D VC with a record constellation size of 7.9×10 ²⁸ is applied to dual-polarization coherent transmission over six time slots. The superchannel is composed of 5.0 Gbaud channels spaced at 5.2 GHz, resulting in an overall spectral efficiency of 12.2 bit/s/Hz and a net throughput of 54.2 Tb/s over the entire C-band after 40 km single-mode fiber. It is the first experimental demonstration of a high-SE MD format providing a significant shaping gain after SD decoding.