?Tianjin University of Technology and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 In order to further improve the carrier synchronization estimation range and accuracy at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), this paper proposes a code-aided carrier synchronization algorithm based on improved nonbinary low-density parity-check (NB-LDPC) codes to study the polarization-division-multiplexing coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (PDM-CO-OFDM) system performance in the cases of quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) modes. The simulation results indicate that this algorithm can enlarge frequency and phase offset estimation ranges and enhance accuracy of the system greatly, and the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system is improved effectively compared with that of the system employing traditional NB-LDPC code-aided carrier synchronization algorithm.