We propose and demonstrate a novel scheme of semi-open-loop polarization control (SOL-PC), which controls the state of polarization (SOP) with high accuracy and uniform high speed. For any desired SOP, we first adjust the initial SOP using open-loop control (OLC) based on the matrix model of a three-unit piezoelectric polarization controller, and quickly move it close to the objective one. Then closed-loop control (CLC) is performed to reduce the error and reach precisely the desired SOP. The response time is three orders faster than that of the present closed-loop polarization control, while the average deviation is on par with it. Finally, the SOL-PC system is successfully applied to realize the suppression of the polarization mode dispersion (PMD) effect and reduce the first-order PMD to near zero. Due to its perfect performance, the SOL-PC energizes the present polarization control to pursue an ideal product that can meet the future requirements in ultrafast optical transmission and quantum communication.

A polarization-diversity loop with a silicon waveguide with a lateral p-i-n diode as a nonlinear medium is used to realize polarization insensitive four-wave mixing. Wavelength conversion of seven dual-polarization 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals at 16 GBd is demonstrated with an optical signal-to-noise ratio penalty below 0.7 dB. High-quality converted signals are generated thanks to the low polarization dependence (≤0.5 dB) and the high conversion efficiency (CE) achievable. The strong Kerr nonlinearity in silicon and the decrease of detrimental free-carrier absorption due to the reverse-biased p-i-n diode are key in ensuring the high CE levels.

The average bit-error-rate (BER) performance is studied for a coherent free-space optical communication system employing differentially encoded quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) with the Mth-power phase estimation method. A closed-form expression, considering the combined effects of the Málaga (M) turbulence fading, pointing errors, and phase estimation errors, is derived in terms of Meijer’s G function. Numerical and Monte Carlo simulation results are presented to verify the derived expression.

A flexible polarization demultiplexing method based on an adaptive Kalman filter (AKF) is proposed in which the process noise covariance has been estimated adaptively. The proposed method may significantly improve the adaptive capability of an extended Kalman filter (EKF) by adaptively estimating the unknown process noise covariance. Compared to the conventional EKF, the proposed method can avoid the tedious and time consuming parameter-by-parameter tuning operations. The effectiveness of this method is confirmed experimentally in 128 Gb/s 16QAM polarization-division-multiplexing (PDM) coherent optical transmission systems. The results illustrate that our proposed AKF has a better tracking accuracy and a faster convergence (about 4 times quicker) compared to a conventional algorithm with optimal process noise covariance.

The influence of the nonlinear propagation effect on three 400 Gb/s/ch (400G) optical fiber communication systems with typical modulation formats, dual-carrier 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM), single-carrier 16QAM (single-16QAM), and four-carrier quadrature phase-shift keying, are investigated. The received optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), affected by the nonlinear interference noise together with the amplified spontaneous emission noise, are compared with three 400G systems and a standard 100 Gb/s/ch system by numerical simulations. Both single channel and multichannel cases are considered. Single-16QAM is found to have the best OSNR among those modulation formats.