Locating Regions of Polarization Activity in WDM Systems

We propose a method for determining the spatial position of fast polarization changes in a WDM system. In particular, we demonstrate that the PMD (polarization mode dispersion) vector and Stokes parameters for each WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) channel can be employed to find with an accuracy, shown to be less than 15% in most simulated cases, the position of the sources of rapid polarization fluctuations in a link with a mean DGD (differential group delay) greater than 15 ps. The technique can also be applied to locate hinge positions provided that only a single hinge is active at any given time.