Chromatic dispersion monitoring technique using sideband optical filtering and clock phase-shift detection

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a novel technique for 40- and 10-Gb/s chromatic dispersion monitoring that uses an optical filter to select the upper and lower vestigial-sideband (VSB) signals in the transmitted optical data and determine the relative clock phase shift caused by dispersion. Without modification of transmitters, this technique provides low cost chromatic dispersion monitoring for WDM systems, <3 ps/nm dispersion resolution for 40-Gb/s data, and greatly reduced sensitivity to the influence of polarization mode dispersion.