Detection and compensation of power imbalance, modulation strength, and bias drift in coherent IQ transmitter through digital filter

Abstract

A novel method to simultaneously detect power imbalance, modulation strength, and bias drift of coherent IQ transmitter during the initial power-up is presented. This is achieved by sweeping gain scaling factor of finite impulse filter in a digital domain and monitoring the combined output power. Furthermore, by dithering gain scaling factor of finite impulse filter, the power imbalance is measured with live traffic. Those impairments can be compensated accordingly. For example, the power imbalance is compensated through adjustment of gain setting of a radio frequency amplifier. This novel method works for multiple channels over C band, and the built-in photodiode of coherent transmitter provides sufficient accuracy.