Polarization Control Technique to Reduce, Power Penalty in Tri-Directional, Transmission Systems

Abstract

Polarization control is used in a tri-directional wavelength-reused system to reduce the power penalty caused by coherent mixing of the signal with Rayleigh backscattering noise. For a 25+25 km, 10 Gb/s tri-directional transmission system, the power penalty is 4.0 dB under the worst polarization control and could be reduced to 0.4 dB under optimal polarization control. The experimental results show that reusing the same wavelength is an efficient and promising method for tri-directional lightwave systems.