A comparison between NRZ and RZ data formats with respect to PMD-induced system degradation

We quantify the polarization-mode dispersion (PMD)-induced system outage probability by means of numerical simulations for nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) and return-to-zero (RZ) data formats with proper comparative conditions and find that RZ performs better than NRZ. We also study the impact of the RZ duty-factor and the tradeoff between power margin and acceptable PMD.