Fast polarization-state tracking scheme based on radius-directed linear Kalman filter

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a fast polarization tracking scheme based on radius-directed linear Kalman filter. It has the advantages of fast convergence and is inherently insensitive to phase noise and frequency offset effects. The scheme is experimentally compared to conventional polarization tracking methods on the polarization rotation angular frequency. The results show that better tracking capability with more than one order of magnitude improvement is obtained in the cases of polarization multiplexed QPSK and 16QAM signals. The influences of the filter tuning parameters on tracking performance are also investigated in detail. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America