*Result*: An unsupervised coherent receiver digital signal processing algorithm based on spectral clustering with no data preamble.

*A coherent optical receiver digital signal processing (DSP) scheme is proposed based on spectral clustering, which utilises spectral clustering to cluster the signals outputted by the DSP. Compared to existing blind DSP algorithms for coherent optical receivers operating at over 100Gbps with PM‐mQAM, the proposed scheme effectively suppresses various physical impairments, achieving lower bit error rates (BERs) at the same transmission distance, thus enabling longer transmission distances under the same forward error correction threshold. Furthermore, simulations of the proposed scheme on a 14GBaud PM‐16QAM coherent optical transmission system show that, at a BER of 1.9E‐2, the maximum transmission distance increases from 1700 to 2000 km, and at a BER of 3.8E‐3, it increases from 700 to 900 km. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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