Chromatic dispersion-monitoring technique based on phase-sensitive detection

A novel chromatic dispersion-monitoring technique is proposed and demonstrated. A path imbalanced interferometer is used to monitor the intensity to phase conversion of a radio-frequency spectral component of a modulated signal. The measurement range of the technique is independent of the data rate and can be tuned by adjusting the path length difference of the interferometer. An unambiguous measurement range of >2300 ps/nm is demonstrated for a 10-GB/s nonreturn-to-zero signal.