Abstract
We present an experimental demonstration of the feasibility of in-band subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) for labeling of differential phase shift keying (DPSK) payload signals. We show that by proper selection of the value of the subcarrier frequency the effect of the superimposed SCM label on the performance of the DPSK signal is minimized. Furthermore, we show experimentally the advantages of using alternative modulation formats such as 16-QAM and multi-carrier SCM for optical labeling of a 10 Gb/s DPSK payload signal.