Coherent optical communications technology for recovery of 1D and 2D formatted optical signals. For example, 1D or 2D formatted signals that travel through fiber optic media may be recovered by separating the light into X- and Y-polarization components, rotating one polarization component (e.g., Y-component) into the polarization space of the other component (e.g., Y-component into the X-polarization space), delaying the rotated component enough to avoid destructive interference and combining the delayed component with the undelayed component to form a folded optical signal, which may then be processed as a X-polarized signal.