Independent component analysis for impairment mitigation in direct-detected Stokes vector modulation

Abstract

In this paper we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate a novel adaptation of independent component analysis (ICA) for compensation of both cross-polarization and inter-symbol interference in a direct-detection link using Stokes vector modulation (SVM). SVM systems suffer from multiple simultaneous impairments that can be difficult to resolve with conventional optical channel DSP techniques. The proposed method is based on a six-dimensional adaptation of ICA that simultaneously de-rotates the SVM constellation, corrects distortion of constellation shape, and mitigates inter-symbol interference (ISI) at high symbol rates. Experimental results at 7.5 Gb/s and 15Gb/s show that the newly developed ICA-based equalizer achieves power penalties below ∼1 dB, compared to the ideal theoretical bit-error rate (BER) curves. At 30-Gb/s, where ISI is more severe, ICA still enables polarization de-rotation and BER < 10−5 before error correction.