Document #: GP-UM-PMD-1000-21
Page 107 of 122
optical signal is converted into an electrical signal. However, because the electrical signal
does not contain the phase information of the corresponding optical signal, the resulting
PMD effect reduction is limited.
Optical PMD compensation is another attractive approach. An optical PMD compensator
enerally contains one or more polarization controllers, a PMD generation device, a PMD
electrical signals in this approach contain all of the amplitude, phase, and polarization
g
monitoring device, and a microprocessor based circuit, as shown in Figure 30. The circuit
receives an error signal from the PMD monitoring device and instructs the PMD
generation device to adjust the PMD values and the polarization controller to adjust the
polarization state input to the PMD generation device to minimize the error signal from
the PMD monitoring device. The PMD is compensated when the PMD generated by the
PMD generating device is the same in value as that of the fiber link, but with its slow axis
aligned with the fast axis of the fiber link.
PMD
Figure 30 Optical PMD compensation. The DOP measured by the polarimeter is used as PMD effect
indicator.
The final approach is polarization multiplexed coherent detection. Because the detected
information of the corresponding optical signal, any optical signal impairments, including
PMD, can be compensated by digital signal processing. In addition, because of the
quadrupled spectrum efficiency resulting from QPSK modulation and polarization
multiplexing, the effective optical signal bandwidth of a 40G channel is about the same
as that of a 10G TDM channel. Consequently, the PMD effect on such a narrow band
signal is also greatly reduced even without PMD compensation. Although transceivers
incorporating polarization multiplexed coherent detection may still not be cost-effective
compared with other approaches for 40Gb/s transmission, they are most attractive for
100Gb/s and higher speed transmissions.
DG
DGD
Compensator
Circuit & Control
Algorithm
PC
Polarimeter