OSNR Margin Brought by Nonlinear Regenerators in the Presence of PMD and Amplified Spontaneous Emission Noise

The behavior of a 2
R
optical regenerator in a link limited by amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) is investigated in detail in this paper. 2
R
regeneration techniques are well known for combating the accumulation ASE noise in an optical signal, but their behavior in the presence of PMD is mostly unknown. Here, we propose a general method to calculate the total outage probability in a link including a cascade of optical regenerators. Through the use of semianalytical models, we study the ability of 2
R
optical regenerators to combat at the same time PMD distortions and ASE noise accumulation in an optical signal, and show their interesting potential to counter independently both detrimental effects.