In this paper, we highlight that it is inadequate to describe the rotation of the state of polarization (RSOP) in a fiber channel with the 2-parameter description model, which was mostly used in the literature. This inadequate model may result in problems in polarization demultiplexing (PolDemux) because the RSOP in a fiber channel is actually a 3-parameter issue that will influence the state of polarization (SOP) of the optical signal propagating in the fiber and is different from the 2-parameter SOP itself. Considering three examples of the 2-parameter RSOP models typically used in the literature, we provide an in-depth analysis of the reasons why the 2-parameter RSOP model cannot represent the RSOP in the fiber channel and the problems that arise for PolDemux in the coherent optical receiver. We present a 3-parameter solution for the RSOP in the fiber channel. Based on this solution, we propose a DSP tracking and equalization scheme for the fast time-varying RSOP using the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The proposed scheme is proved to be universal and can solve all the PolDemux problems based on the 2- or 3-parameter RSOP model and exhibits good performance in the time-varying RSOP scenarios.

A window-split frequency domain Kalman scheme is proposed in this paper for the equalization of large polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and ultra-fast rotation of state-of-polarization (RSOP) which is an extreme environment due to the Kerr effect and the Faraday effect under the lightning strike near the fiber cables. In order to carry out the proposed Kalman scheme, we give a simplified and equivalent fiber channel model as a replacement for the general model of the polarization effect of the co-existence of PMD and RSOP. With this fiber channel model, we can conduct compensation for PMD in the frequency domain and tracking RSOP in time domain. A half analytical and half empirical theory for the initialization of the process and measurement noise covariance is also presented in theory and verified by the numerical simulation. The performance of the proposed Kalman scheme is checked in the 28Gbaud PDM-QPSK coherent system built on both simulation and experiment platforms. The simulation and experiment results confirm that compared with the generally used constant modulus algorithm (CMA), the proposed scheme provides excellent performance and stability to cope with large range DGD from 20ps to 200ps and RSOP from 200krad/s to 2Mrad/s, with less computational complexity.

Modulation format identification (MFI) is a key technology in optical performance monitoring for the next-generation optical network, such as the intelligent cognitive optical network. An MFI scheme based on the Calinski–Harabasz index for a polarization-division multiplexing (PDM) optical fiber communication system is proposed. The numerical simulations were carried out on a 28 Gbaud PDM communication system. The results show that the required minimum optical signal-to-noise ratio values of each modulation format to achieve 100% identification accuracy are all equal to or lower than their corresponding 7% forward error correction thresholds, and the proposed scheme is robust to residual chromatic dispersion. Meanwhile, the proposed scheme was further verified by 20 Gbaud PDM-QPSK/16QAM/32QAM long-haul fiber transmission experiments. The results show that the scheme has a good reliability when fiber non-linear impairments exist. In addition, the complexity of the scheme is significantly lower than that of other clustering-based MFI schemes.

We propose a joint multi-polarization-effect tracking and equalization method based on two extended Kalman filters, which can cope with state of polarization (SOP) tracing, polarization demultiplexing, equalization for polarization dependent loss (PDL) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in PDM-M-QAM coherent optical communication system. The mathematical model of the proposed method is given and analyzed in detail. Through simulation, the proposed method is proved to be very effective in a 28 Gbaud/s PDM-16QAM system. With the proposed method, SOP tracing speed is up to 110 Mrad/s for azimuth angle and 1200 krad/s for phase angle, respectively, and PDL and PMD can be equalized simultaneously in the values of 10 dB and more than half of the symbol period.

In this paper, we improve the learned digital back propagation (LDBP) and propose a novel joint intra and inter-channel nonlinearity compensation scheme for polarization division multiplexing wavelength-division multiplexed (PDM-WDM) systems. From the perspective of interpretable neural network, the scheme realizes the alternating compensation of chromatic dispersion (CD) and nonlinearity based on physical models. The chromatic dispersion compensation (CDC) adopts one-dimensional convolution operation in the time domain. Moreover, the pulse-broadening effect is introduced into the overlap-and-save method. For nonlinear compensation, the improved joint model is applied, and the impact of the intra-channel pulse broadening and the walk-off effect between different channels caused by CD on the nonlinear effect is considered. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, we construct an 11-channel simulation system of 36 GBaud PDM uniform 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (PDM-16QAM) 1600 km and 64 GBaud PDM-64QAM 400 km, as well as a 5-channel experimental system of 28 GBaud PDM-16QAM 806.4 km. The simulation results show that the performance of PDM-16QAM with 0.5 steps per span and PDM-64QAM with 2 steps per span improve the Q-factor by approximately 0.75 dB and 0.54 dB at the optimal launch power, compared with the linear compensation scheme. The transmission performance of PDM-16QAM is higher than that of digital back propagation with 5 steps per span (DBP-5StPS), and the complexity is only 31.36% of that of DBP-5StPS. The performance of PDM-64QAM is higher than that of DBP-10StPS, with a complexity of 62.72%. The experimental results show that the performance of PDM-16QAM with 0.5 steps per span is improved with 0.86 dB Q-factor improvement compared with the linear compensation scheme at the optimal launch power, and the performance of the proposed scheme is higher than that of DBP-5StPS with a complexity of only 23.68%.

We propose a blind and low-complexity modulation format identification (MFI) scheme for elastic optical networks (EONs). Since the square operation reduces half the number of the clusters in Stokes space, the scheme directly performs principal component analysis (PCA) on Stokes parameters after square operation. This greatly reduces the dimensionality of received signals from 3 × N to 3 × 3. Subsequently, three obtained principal components (PCs) are employed synthetically to identify the modulation formats. The effectiveness is first verified through 28 GBaud polarization division multiplexing (PDM)-BPSK/-QPSK/-8QAM/-16QAM/-32QAM/-64QAM simulation systems. Only using 2048 symbols, the required minimum optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) values to achieve 100% MFI success rate are all equal to or lower than their corresponding 7% forward error correction (FEC) thresholds. Besides that, the scheme also obtains significant tolerances to residual chromatic dispersion (CD) and differential group delay (DGD). Finally, the proposed scheme is further verified by 20 GBaud PDM-QPSK/-16QAM/-32QAM long-haul transmission experiments. The results demonstrate that the scheme exhibits good resilience towards fiber nonlinear impairments. More importantly, compared with other four kinds of MFI schemes, the used symbol number to achieve 100% MFI success rate notably equals to at most 2/5 as that of other schemes, and its time complexity can be reduced to O(N).