Abstract

Recently, there have been growing interests in high-speed WDM systems based on >10-Gb/s channels. However, these high-speed optical signals are susceptible to the chromatic dispersion. To overcome this problem, there have been substantial efforts to develop the chromatic dispersion compensation techniques. However, in a dynamically re-configurable WDM network, the chromatic dispersion of each channel could be changed frequently. In addition, the chromatic dispersion is sensitive to ambient temperature.¹ Thus, it is essential to monitor the chromatic dispersion accurately for the efficient compensation. Previously, it has been reported that the chromatic dispersion could be estimated by using the clock component of the baseband signal and double sideband tone.^2–3 However, these techniques provide only the control signal for the dispersion compensation and their accuracy could be affected by self-phase modulation (SPM). In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a simple technique that can truly monitor the chromatic dispersion of each channel quantitatively in WDM network.

© 2002 Optical Society of America