Automatic PMD compensation experiment with particle swarm optimization and adaptive dithering algorithms for 10-gb/s NRZ and RZ formats

We demonstrate a 10-Gb/s polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) compensation experiment by using a 4-degree of freedom compensator for both NRZ and RZ formats. The particle swarm optimization method is used as the searching algorithm and an adaptive dithering algorithm is employed in tracking process. The results show that the searching process is finished within several hundreds of milliseconds and the response time for the compensator to recover from a sudden disturbance is less than 20 ms.