Fabian Steiner, Georg Böcherer, and Patrick Schulte have won the 2019 IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology (JLT) Paper Award for their publication "Rate adaptation and reach increase by probabilistically shaped 64-QAM: an experimental demonstration" that appeared in April 2016.
The paper proposes a transmission system with adjustable data rate for optical fiber that enables high-speed communication close to the Shannon limit. The system is based on Georg, Patrick, and Fabian's probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) method that won third prize at the 2015 Bell Labs Prize competition. At 32 Gbaud, the paper experimentally demonstrates that probabilistically shaped 64-QAM signals increase the reach of regular 16-QAM and regular 64-QAM signals by more than 40%.
The paper was co-authored by Fred Buchali, Laurent Schmalen, and Wilfried Idler of Bell Labs in Stuttgart. Please see www.ieee-jlt.org/Awards for further details. The award is accompanied by a trophy that will be presented during the Awards Ceremony at OFC 2019.