Simultaneous chromatic dispersion, polarization-mode-dispersion and OSNR monitoring at 40Gbit/s

Lamia Baker-Meflah; Benn Thomsen; John Mitchell; Polina Bayvel

doi:10.1364/oe.16.015999

Simultaneous chromatic dispersion, polarization-mode-dispersion and OSNR monitoring at 40Gbit/s

Opt Express. 2008 Sep 29;16(20):15999-6004. doi: 10.1364/oe.16.015999.

Authors

Lamia Baker-Meflah¹, Benn Thomsen, John Mitchell, Polina Bayvel

Affiliation

¹ Dept. of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, University College London, Torrington Place, London WC1E 7JE, United Kingdom. l.baker@ee.ucl.ac.uk

PMID: 18825238
DOI: 10.1364/oe.16.015999

Abstract

A novel method for independent and simultaneous monitoring of chromatic dispersion (CD), first-order PMD and OSNR in 40Gbit/s systems is proposed and demonstrated. This is performed using in-band tone monitoring of 5GHz, optically down-converted to a low intermediate-frequency (IF) of 10kHz. The measurement provides a large monitoring range with good accuracies for CD (4742+/-100ps/nm), differential group delay (DGD) (200+/-4ps) and OSNR (23+/-1dB), independently of the bit-rate. In addition, the use of electro-absorption modulators (EAM) for the simultaneous down-conversion of all channels and the use of low-speed detectors makes it cost effective for multi-channel operation.