Digital Compensation for Optical Transmission System

Abstract

A receiver for an optical transmission system, has a polarization diverse and phase diverse coherent optical receiver, and a digital adaptive equalizer for compensating for distortions in the optical signal introduced by the optical path. The entire field of the optical signal is mapped including phase and polarization information, to enable more complete compensation for impairments such as chromatic dispersion and PMD. Furthermore, it can also reduce the problems which have so far held back coherent optical detection from widespread implementation, such as polarization alignment and phase tracking. This can be applied to upgrade existing installed transmission routes to increase capacity without the expense of replacing the old fiber.

1 . A receiver for an optical transmission system, having a polarization diverse and phase diverse coherent optical receiver, for receiving an optical input signal on an optical path and generating digital electrical outputs, and a digital adaptive equalizer coupled to the digital outputs, for compensating for distortions in the optical signal introduced by the optical path.  
     
     
         2 . The receiver of  claim 1 , having a bit error detector, the adaptive equalizer being arranged to minimize a bit error rate.  
     
     
         3 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the optical receiver having four outputs, in-phase and quadrature on two polarizations.  
     
     
         4 . The receiver of  claim 3 , the optical signal having two or more information channels modulated orthogonally, the adaptive equalizer being arranged to maximise an orthogonality of the information channels.  
     
     
         5 . The receiver of  claim 4 , having a correlator for determining the orthogonality.  
     
     
         6 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the adaptive equalizer being a transversal filter.  
     
     
         7 . The receiver of  claim 6 , the transversal filter being adapted by iteration of a limited set of independent variables including three defining the orientation and magnitude of PMD, and one each for the chromatic dispersion, the orientation of polarizing element at the receiver, and the phase of a local oscillator used for phase diverse detection in the optical receiver.  
     
     
         8 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the adaptive equalizer being one of a maximum likelihood sequence estimator and a maximum a posteriori detector.  
     
     
         9 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the adaptive equalizer being arranged to have an update rate of at least 1 kHz.  
     
     
         10 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the adaptive equalizer having fractional spacing.  
     
     
         11 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the optical receiver having a polarization beam splitter feeding a pair of 90° optical hybrids, and convertors for converting outputs of the optical hybrids into digital electrical signals.  
     
     
         12 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the optical input signal being quadrature amplitude modulated, the adaptive equalizer having one or more in phase and quadrature outputs for each polarization.  
     
     
         13 . The receiver of  claim 1 , the optical input signal being modulated by any of phase, amplitude, frequency, and polarization, the adaptive equalizer being arranged to output demodulated signals.  
     
     
         14 . A digital adaptive equalizer for the receiver of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         15 . Software for implementing the equalizer of  claim 14 .  
     
     
         16 . A method of offering a data transmission service over the receiver of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         17 . A receiver according to  claim 1  having six outputs, three on each polarization state.  
     
     
         18 . A receiver according to  claim 17  wherein the three outputs on each polarization have 120° relative phase or polarization difference.