POLARIZATION ALLOCATION SCHEMES FOR MINIMIZING FIBER 4-WAVE-MIXING CROSSTALK IN WAVELENGTH-DIVISION MULTIPLEXED OPTICAL COMMUNICATION-SYSTEMS

Fiber four-wave mixing (FWM) crosstalk can severely limit system perfo rmance in multichannel optical communication systems, We present a sim ple technique that exploits the polarization dependence of fiber (FWM) crosstalk generation in order to reduce FWM crosstalk levels in such systems, By allocating the polarization states of the channels optimal ly in relation to each other, the FWM crosstalk at the channel wavelen gths can be reduced significantly compared to simple alternate polariz ation allocation schemes. The principle has been demonstrated experime ntally in a dense WDM optical communication system.