Chromatic dispersion monitoring and adaptive compensation using pilot symbols in an 8 x 12.5 Gbit/s all-optical OFDM system

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel technique for chromatic dispersion (CD) monitoring and adaptive compensation in an 8 x 12.5 Gbit/s all-optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (AO-OFDM) system by using two pilot symbols and a virtually imaged phased array (VIPA) for a tunable CD compensator. The two pilot symbols are added to the first and the last sub-channels of the OFDM signal, and their relative time delay is detected and used for CD estimation at the CD monitoring circuit. The monitored CD value is fed to VIPA for CD compensation. In the experiments, the relative time delay between the two pilot symbols was successfully observed, and the adaptive CD compensation drastically improved the bit-error-rate (BER) from over 10(-5) to under 10(-9). The estimated CD values showed less than 10 ps/nm difference from the values measured by a photonic dispersion analyzer, which is accurate enough since the AO-OFDM system can keep BER<10(-9) upto 20 ps/nm residual CD.