Experimental evaluation of optical crosstalk mitigation using phase scrambling

In this letter, we report an experimental study of mitigation of optical ho modyne crosstalk by phase scrambling. This mitigation is obtained by freque ncy shifting the signal-crosstalk beating noise power out of the receiver b andwidth. An increased tolerance to crosstalk of 7 and 5 dB is measured in a 2.5-Gb/s link of 100 and 200 km of standard single mode fiber, respective ly. This result indicates the feasibility of optical networking in the LAN/ MAN domain, by tolerating the relatively high crosstalk levels of present o ptical switching technology. Our experiment is in good agreement with theor etical results.