Impact of chirping on polarization-mode dispersion compensated systems

Investigates the effect of chirp, resulting from either the transmitter, chromatic dispersion, or Kerr effect in the fiber, on polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) compensated systems. We demonstrate both experimentally and numerically the deleterious impact of chirping on systems with first-order PMD compensation. We present a way to optimize the PMD compensator performance by minimizing the total chirp of the signal at the receiver side.