Tracking and separation of time-varying principal states of polarization in optical fiber link for first-order PMD compensation and its filter-dependent performance

We propose a simple method for tracking and separating time-varying principal states of polarization (PSP) occurring in a fiber-optic transmission link with polarization mode dispersion (PMD) for use in PMD compensation. The proposed method uses as a feedback monitoring signal the bandpass-filtered RF power at bit-rate frequency for NRZ signal format. We demonstrated the operating principle of the method through theoretical simulation and experiment using an automatically adaptive PMD compensator employing a single polarization beam splitter (PBS). The effects of electrical filtering on the PSP tracking performance were also investigated by using three types of filters, i.e., a low-pass filter (LPF), a band-pass filter (BPF), and a high-pass filter (HPF). The simulation results showed that only a BPF centered at bit-rate frequency was found to allow for tracing and separation of two PSPs via PBS. The proposed method, when applied to a conventional PMD compensator that alternately controls a polarization controller and a delay line, enables separation of PSP control from differential-group-delay (DGD) control, thus allowing fast tracking of rapidly changing PSP in a PMD-impaired optical fiber link and reducing compensation time.