Forward error correction (FEC) plays a vital role in coherent optical systems employing multi-level modulation. However, much of coding theory assumes that additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is dominant, whereas coherent optical systems have significant phase noise (PN) in addition to AWGN. This changes the error statistics and impacts FEC performance. In this paper, we propose a novel semi-analytical method for dimensioning binary Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes for systems with PN.

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... r method involves extracting statistics from pre-FEC bit error rate (BER) simulations. We use these statistics to parameterize a bivariate binomial model that describes the distribution of bit errors. In this way, we relate pre-FEC statistics to post-FEC BER and BCH codes. Our method is applicable to pre-FEC BER around 10 −3 and any post-FEC BER. Using numerical simulations, we evaluate the accuracy of our approach for a target post-FEC BER of 10 −5 . Codes dimensioned with our bivariate binomial model meet the target within 0.2 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).