OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM AND METHOD USING OPTICAL CHANNELS WITH PAIR-WISE ORTHOGONAL RELATIONSHIP

摘要

An optical communication system and method may be configured to operate with optical signals having reduced channel spacing. The system may transmit optical signals on a plurality of optical channels with a pair-wise orthogonal relationship such that a first subset of channels has a first polarization state and a second subset of channels has a second polarization state. The channels may be spaced such that there is no overlap of modulation sidebands associated with channels in each of the polarization states. When receiving the optical signals, the orthogonal channels adjacent to a selected channel of interest may be nulled.