In this paper, we present a simple experimental method to generate a DP-16QAM optical signal for high spectral efficiency optical transmission. A 16QAM optical signal is generated by passing a DP-QPSK signal through a linear polarization filter in a certain angle so that a square 16QAM can be achieved. Afterwards, we use a polarization multiplexer in order to produce a dual polarization signal. This method proved to be a straightforward and stable way to generate a DP-16QAM signal. In addition, we show that it can provide the same quality in terms of BER per OSNR demonstrated elsewhere.
16QAM; optical transmission; spectral efficiency; modulation formats