All-Optical Chromatic Dispersion Monitoring for Phase-Modulated Signals Utilizing Cross-Phase Modulation in a Highly Nonlinear Fiber

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an all-optical chromatic dispersion (CD) monitoring technique for phase-modulated signals utilizing the cross-phase-modulation effect between the input signal and the inserted continuous-wave probe. The probe's optical spectrum changes with the accumulated CD on the input signal, indicating that the optical power variations can be measured for monitoring. The experimental results show that this technique can monitor up to 120 ps/nm of CD for a 40-Gb/s return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) transmission system, with the maximum measured optical power increment of 16.5 dB. The applicability of this monitoring technique to higher bit-rate phase-modulated signals, such as 80-Gb/s RZ differential quadrature phase-shift keying and 80-Gb/s polarization-multiplexed RZ-DPSK, is also investigated via simulation.