US Patent 9281915 Optical polarization demultiplexing for a coherent-detection scheme

An optical receiver having a plurality of optical IQ modulators arranged in a butterfly configuration and configured to operate as an optical polarization de-multiplexer. The optical receiver further has (i) an opto-electric circuit configured to apply optical homodyne detection to an optical input signal received by the optical receiver and (ii) a controller configured to generate one or more control signals for driving the IQ modulators of the plurality based on one or more electrical feedback signals received from the opto-electric circuit.