A DOP feedback controlling multi-stage electrical PMD compensator in digital coherent receiver

We proposed a degree of polarization (DOP) controlling multi-stage electrical polarization mode dispersion (PMD) compensator in digital coherent receiver. The compensator is modulation format independent and can mitigate both first order and higher order PMD. We evaluated this PMD compensator in both 100-Gb/s 16-QAM and QPSK signal transmission systems with 15 ps and 20 ps average differential group delay (DGD) respectively. The results show that, for both two cases, less than 0.2 dB optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) penalty at 1e−3 symbol error rate (SER) can be achieved after 4-stage PMD compensation.

► We proposed a electrical multi-stage higher order PMD compensator in DSP after coherent detection. ► The DOP is used to control the compensator setting. ► For 100-Gb/s QPSK with 15 ps average DGD, the 4-stage compensator can achieve less than 0.2 dB OSNR penalty at 1e−3 SER. ► For 100-Gb/s 16-QAM with 20 ps average DGD, the 4-stage compensator can achieve less than 0.2 dB OSNR penalty at 1e−3 SER.