Chromatic dispersion monitoring for multiple modulation formats and data rates using sideband optical filtering and asynchronous amplitude sampling technique.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a low-cost technique for chromatic dispersion (CD) monitoring in various return-to-zero (RZ) amplitude and phase-modulated systems at different data rates by analyzing the asynchronously sampled amplitudes of two vestigial sideband (VSB) signals. The proposed technique graphically represents the CD induced-effects in a scatter plot of which a parameter is extracted to monitor CD and is resilient to OSNR variations. Simulations and experimental results demonstrate good monitoring ranges and sensitivities for various modulation formats at different data rates without any modification of the monitoring hardware. The influence of first-order polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) on the accuracy of proposed monitoring technique is also investigated.