Yao Leon, Huang Hao, Chen James, Tan Ernie, Willner Alan
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA.
Opt Express. 2012 Jan 16;20(2):1691-9. doi: 10.1364/OE.20.001691.
We propose and demonstrate a novel scheme for obtaining quasi-uniform rate polarization scrambling at up to 752 krad/s in fiber optic systems by using cascaded multiple fiber squeezers with each one placed in a certain orientation. Additionally, this polarization scrambler is compatible with both single-polarization and polarization-multiplexing systems. We also show that scrambled SOP with this scheme uniformly covers the whole Poincare Sphere and that the scrambling rates are mostly concentrated towards the high end of the rate distribution histogram. Such a scrambling scheme is advantageous for the deterministic characterization of performances for modern fiber optic transceivers, especially those deploying coherent detection techniques, against rapid polarization variations.
