Polarization shift keying (POLSK) phase diversity homodyne system with multiplying detection in coherent optical communications

We propose a Polarization Shift Keying (POLSK) phase diversity homo-dyne system with multiplying detection in coherent optical communications. The proposed system uses only one of three Stokes parameters, which is the phase difference between two orthogonal polarizations. Although such systems using only one Stokes parameter are very sensitive to polarization fluctuation, the proposed system becomes insensitive to the linear polarization fluctuation by using the multiplying detection with a combination of in-phase and quadrature optical signal components on two orthogonal polarizations. Furthermore, insensitivity to phase noise and offset frequency and attractiveness due to homodyne type in high-speed transmissions are maintained. The most attractive feature of the proposed system is that neither a polarization controller nor electronic feedback loop for matching the state of polarization (SOP) between transmitted and local oscillator (LO) optical signals is needed. We theoretically analyze the receiver sensitivity and the power penalties of the proposed system for the cases of the elliptical SOP of received optical signals and the imbalance optical 90° hybrid.