Polarization-mode dispersion compensation in WDM systems

We demonstrate, both experimentally and numerically, polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) compensation in wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) systems without wavelength demultiplexing. Our technique improves the overall system performance by reducing the fading probability for the worst-performing channel at any given time. The effectiveness of our approach is based on the fact that, for moderate PMD, the probability that all channels are severely degraded at the same time is extremely small. A single-section PMD compensator reduces the 2% worst-case power penalty for a four-channel 10-Gb/s WDM system with /spl sim/42 ps average differential group delay from 9.6 to 5.3 dB.