Optical performance monitoring for OFDM using low bandwidth coherent receivers

We propose using low bandwidth coherent receivers for distributed optical performance monitoring. We demonstrate optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) monitoring of both 20-Gb/s single-polarization and 40-Gb/s polarization-multiplexed coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) signals with a 0.8-GHz receiver using both data-aided (DA) and non-data-aided (NDA) approaches. The sampling rate of the performance monitor is much lower than the signal baud rate, so provides a cost-effective solution for distributed optical performance monitoring. The proposed method is demonstrated experimentally and through simulation. The results show that after calibration the OSNR monitoring error is less than 1 dB and the two approaches are not affected by fiber dispersion after 800-km transmission and 30-ps differential group delay (DGD).