A Highly Flexible Polarization Demultiplexing Scheme for Short-Reach Transmission

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an effective and highly flexible polarization demultiplexing scheme based on a Stokes analyzer, which could be also applied to the nonorthogonal polarization division multiplexing (NPDM) schemes. Compared with the conventional direct detection, the proposed method has better tolerance to the polarization-dependent loss. Furthermore, such an approach can significantly enhance system flexibility without increasing cost and complexity since the transmitted signals are not required to maintain strict orthogonality, and no additional polarization-tracking feedback circuit is needed. Experimental results show that any polarization multiplexing degree that is larger than 23° can be adaptively demultiplexed after 10-km transmission using optical orthogonality monitoring and digital-signal-processing (DSP) algorithms.