Method for improving the performance of digital coherent optical receiver using single ended photo-detection

A system for mitigating distortion in coherent single-ended photo-detection, comprising:

• a coherent detector including a plurality of phase and polarization diverse hybrids and polarization beam splitters, photo-detectors and analog-to-digital converters, the detector configured to receive an optical signal carried on an optical transmission medium and coherently detect the received optical signal to produce a digitized signal;
• and
• a digital signal processor including a module for estimating a time-dependent random variable introducing distortion to the coherently detected signal and subtracting the distortion from digitized signal to produce a distortion mitigated output signal.

A computer-readable medium having encoded machine executable instructions that, when executed by at least one processor, causes an apparatus to mitigate distortion in coherent single-ended photo-detection by:

• estimating a time-dependent random variable introducing distortion to a digitized signal from a coherently detected optical signal;
• and
• subtracting the distortion from the digitized signal to produce a distortion mitigated output signal.