Application of self-phase modulation and optical filtering to measurement of residual chromatic dispersion

We have examined a dispersion monitoring technique using spectral filtering of an SPM-broadened RZ data stream to measure residual pulse dispersion. Our results indicate that spectral broadening is a good measure of residual dispersion, and is directly correlated with dispersion related receiver impairment. The method works well over a range of relevant BER penalties and is limited only by interpulse interference at large pulse dispersion.