Polarization mode dispersion and its mitigation techniques in high speed fiber optical communication systems

Summary form only given. Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is considered to be one of the main obstacles for deploying high-speed optical communication systems operating at 40-Gb/s per channel and higher. For system with larger PMD, some PMD mitigation techniques have to be used. PMD mitigation techniques can be divided into three main approaches: (i) passive mitigation techniques, (ii) electrical PMD compensation, and (iii) optical PMD compensation. Except the passive ones, most PMD mitigation techniques are channel based, which means that each channel in a WDM system requires a separate PMD compensator. This is very cost ineffective. Recently, some ideas of multi-channel PMD compensators were proposed, including channel switching and some PMD compensator sharing techniques.