We experimentally demonstrate a digital signal processing (DSP)-based optical performance monitoring (OPM) algorithm for in-service monitoring of chromatic dispersion (CD) in coherent transport networks. Dispersion accumulated in 40 Gbit/s QPSK signal after 80 km of fiber transmission is successfully monitored and automatically compensated without prior knowledge of fiber dispersion coefficient. Four different metrics for assessing CD mitigation are implemented and simultaneously verified proving to have high estimation accuracy. No observable penalty is measured when the monitoring module drives an adaptive digital CD equalizer.
© 2011 Optical Society of America