Polarization Demultiplexing for Stokes Vector Direct Detection

Abstract

The conventional intensity modulation with direct detection faces the capacity bottleneck beyond 100-Gb/s per wavelength, due to its 1-dimension (1-D) modulation and detection. To increase the spectral efficiency, there emerge a variety of direct detection subsystems based on the Stokes vector receiver (SV-R). The Stokes space contains the intensity information of three independent polarizations. Therefore, the SV-R enlarges the detection dimensions at receiver to 3. The SV-R can recover any 2-D or 3-D signal modulated in Stokes space. One of the most significant features of SV-R is the DSP-enabled polarization demultiplexing. Instead of a 2 × 2 Jones matrix, in Stokes space, a 3 × 3 rotatio..