Analysis and simulation of polarization mode dispersion effects on high bit-rate fiber-optic transmission system

Simulation is presented on the effects of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) as a source of system impairment in high bit-rate fiber-optic transmission systems. A simulation model is introduced that illustrates how the differential group delay (DGD) affects the bit error rate (BER) limiting the system performance. Power penalty due to PMD is determined from both the eye diagram and BER curve and their mutual consistency is verified. As a PMD compensation scheme, in this paper, a polarization controller (PC) is used and the performance of two systems with and without PC is compared. Results show that at a bit rate of 10 Gbps, for a DGD of 80 ps, power penalty can be improved by about 1.25 dB when using a polarization controller in the system.