Monolithically integrated dual polarization sixport receiver for fiber optic coherent communications

A novel dual polarization monolithically integrated six-port coherent receiver architecture is proposed and analyzed. Contrary to Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) architectures, which rely on polarization beam splitters as the main polarization management building block, our proposal completely avoids the use of such subsystems providing a completely novel solution which potentially offers relaxed fabrication tolerances.