Polarization Tracking in the Presence of PDL and Fast Temporal Drift

TL;DR

This paper evaluates polarization tracking algorithms in optical systems with rapid SOP rotations and PDL, proposing methods that outperform traditional gradient descent algorithms without needing parameter tuning.

Contribution

The paper introduces new polarization tracking algorithms that are more robust to fast SOP and PDL variations without requiring step size adjustments.

Findings

Proposed algorithms outperform GD-based methods in robustness.

Numerical simulations confirm effectiveness under rapid SOP and PDL drift.

Suitable for aerial fiber links with fast polarization changes.

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of polarization tracking algorithms in optical transmission systems suffering from fast state of polarization (SOP) rotations and polarization-dependent loss (PDL). While most of the gradient descent (GD)-based algorithms in the literature may require step size adjustment when the channel condition changes, we propose tracking algorithms that can perform similarly or better without parameter tuning. Numerical simulation results show higher robustness of the proposed algorithms to SOP and PDL drift compared to GD-based algorithms, making them promising candidates to be used in aerial fiber links where the SOP can potentially drift rapidly, and therefore becomes challenging to track.