Time interleaved polarization multiplexing for polarization labelling

We investigate the use of polarization for labelling in optical networks and demonstrate experimentally that an interleaved polarization multiplexing technique is significantly more robust than traditional polarization multiplexing in the presence of random polarization variations. This time interleaved polarization multiplexing scheme does not suffer from the coherent crosstalk inherent to traditional polarization multiplexing. Channel identification and automatic polarization control is achieved using a pilot tone technique.