The present invention concerns a method for performing optical dispersion compensation of wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical signals. The method comprises the steps of providing a compensation stage with an optical transmission medium to be used as parallel operating cascade of polarization controllers and optical birefringent elements to compensate dispersion of the WDM optical signals when being transmitted spectrally dispersed into the different wavelength channels in parallel through the parallel cascades. The method is being characterized by determining the chromatic dispersion of the optical signals at one or few different wavelength channels possibly allowing an extrapolation of the chromatic dispersion to the other wavelength channels for defining accordingly an additional feedback signal to be used for the polarization controller setting.