Demonstration of in-line monitoring and compensation of polarization-dependent loss for multiple channels

Author

Yan, L.-S. ; Yu, Q. ; Willner, A.E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. Syst., Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Volume

14

Issue

6

fYear

2002

fDate

6/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

864

Lastpage

866

Abstract

We use polarization scrambling at the beginning of the link and monitor down stream the power fluctuation induced by in-line components that exhibit polarization-dependent loss (PDL). Compensation of PDL is realized by minimizing this power fluctuation when a variable PDL element is tuned. We demonstrate in-line monitoring and compensation of PDL for an 800-km optical link with a 2.4-dB average PDL and 14-ps average polarization-mode dispersion. By scrambling the polarization of an ancillary wavelength located at the center of a four-channel 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero wavelength-division-multiplexing system, the 2% power-penalty distribution tail is reduced from 6.5 dB to <2 dB within a 6-nm PDL-compensation bandwidth.

Keywords

compensation; optical fibre dispersion; optical fibre losses; optical fibre networks; optical fibre polarisation; optical fibre testing; telecommunication channels; wavelength division multiplexing; 10 Gbit/s; 14 ps; 800 km; PDL-compensation bandwidth; compensation; four-channel 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero wavelength-division-multiplexing system; in-line components; in-line monitoring; multiple channels; optical link; polarization scrambling; polarization-dependent loss; polarization-mode dispersion; power fluctuation; power-penalty distribution tail; variable PDL element; Erbium-doped fiber amplifier; Fluctuations; High speed optical techniques; Monitoring; Optical filters; Optical losses; Optical polarization; Page description languages; Stimulated emission; Wavelength division multiplexing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2002.1003119

Filename

1003119