Dynamical phase alignment of sampling clock in optical performance monitoring system

In an optical performance monitoring system for high-speed optical communications, the ultra-short optical pulse from the laser is divided into two parts. One is to sample high-speed optical communication signal and the other as the sampling clock in an analog/digital converter (ADC) after detecting using a photon-detector. We propose a simple method based on variance calculation to align the phase of sampling clock in an ADC. The experiments demonstrate that, with the proposed method, the eye diagram or constellation diagram of high-speed optical communication signal can be reconstructed by the optical performance monitoring system.