Jones precoder for polarization mode dispersion compensation

A new electrical-domain precoder is proposed to mitigate polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in optical communications by modeling a PMD-dominant fiber optical channel using a single input multiple output (SIMO) channel. Employing a bank of finite impulse response filters and a polarization modulator, and using parameters derived from the Jones matrix representation of PMD, the proposed precoder efficiently adapts to the time-varying nature of PMD and simultaneously pre-equalizes both polarization modes at the transmitter. The transmitter-only structure avoids losing phase and polarization information due to the nonlinearity of the commonly used square law direct-detection receiver. Analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of channel mismatch due to feedback delay, channel estimation errors, and the impact of the finite length of the precoder filters. The analytical results are used to guide selection of the appropriate feedback rate for the adaptive system. Extensive simulation results confirm the efficiency of the proposed Jones precoder, and present it as an effective, low-cost replacement to the complicated, expensive optical-domain counter-parts.