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Abstract We propose a novel 8-level multidimensional intensity modulation scheme with the goal of achieving transmission rates higher than 200 Gbps when using only commercially available components. The generation of this modulation scheme is explained here and it is shown to increase the noise tolerance when compared with the 8-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-8), at the expense of spectral efficiency. We show that the proposed 3-dimensional (3D) modulation provides the same relative minimum distance gain for both non-duobinary (non-DB) and duobinary (DB) signaling. Gains ranging from 1 dB and up to 1.9 dB are shown in simulations for bit-error rates (BER) equal to or below 4x10−3, when comparing with the classic PAM-8. We demonstrate experimentally that 3D PAM-8 lowers the BER by up to 10 times for non-DB transmissions and by up to 3 times for DB transmissions. The proposed multidimensional modulation increases the maximum achievable bit rate from 205 Gbps (with PAM-8) up to roughly 240 Gbps, enabling 200 Gbps net rate single-lambda transmissions for next generation intra- and inter-datacenter optical transmission systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]