  Chip-scale frequency comb generators have the potential to become key
building blocks of compact wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transceivers
in future metropolitan or campus-area networks. Among the various comb
generator concepts, quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) stand out
as a particularly promising option, combining small footprint with simple
operation by a DC current and offering flat broadband comb spectra. However,
the data transmission performance achieved with QD-MLLD was so far limited by
strong phase noise of the individual comb tones, restricting experiments to
rather simple modulation formats such as quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK)
or requiring hard-ware-based compensation schemes. Here we demonstrate that
these limitations can be over-come by digital symbol-wise phase tracking
algorithms, avoiding any hardware-based phase-noise compensation. We
demonstrate 16QAM dual-polarization WDM transmission on 38 channels at an
aggregate net data rate of 10.68 Tbit/s over 75 km of standard single-mode
fiber. To the best of our knowledge, this corresponds to the highest data rate
achieved through a DC-driven chip-scale comb generator without any
hardware-based phase-noise reduction schemes.
