Doubling of bandwidth utilization using two orthogonal polarizations and power unbalancing in a polarization-division-multiplexing scheme

Abstract

We propose and experimentally implement a method of demultiplexing two data channels, which were multiplexed using orthogonal polarizations on the same wavelength in a power ratio of 1:2 in order to double the bandwidth utilization in the fiber. Our technique facilitates the straightforward decoding of the two data channels and does not require the demultiplexing of the two orthogonal polarizations at the receiver. The two polarization channels each at 2.2 Gb/s are recovered after 100 km of fiber transmission with <1.0-dB power penalty.