Multi-impairment monitoring from adaptive finite-impulse-response filters in a digital coherent receiver

We propose a novel and unified algorithm that estimates linear impairments in optical transmission systems from tap coefficients of an adaptive finite-impulse response (FIR) filter in a coherent optical receiver. Measurable impairments include chromatic dispersion (CD), differential group delay (DGD) between two principal states of polarization, second-order polarization-mode dispersion (second-order PMD), and polarization-dependent loss (PDL). We validate our multi-impairment monitoring algorithm by dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) transmission experiments.