Polarization and Nonlinear Impairments in Fiber Communication Systems

This chapter discusses polarization and nonlinear impairments in single‐carrier coherent optical communication systems. It first gives basics on polarization of light. Then, the chapter presents the phenomena of polarization‐mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization‐dependent loss (PDL) in optical communication systems. Next, it shows the modeling of nonlinear transmission in optical fibers. Digital coherent optical communication systems and some electrical equalization techniques are discussed in a separate section. The chapter also presents the PMD and PDL impairments in digital coherent optical communication systems. Finally, it focuses on nonlinear impairments in coherent‐detection optical communication systems, and non‐linearities in three different dispersion‐managed systems, including homogeneous polarization‐division multiplexing‐quadrature‐phase‐shift‐keying (PDM‐QPSK), hybrid PDM‐QPSK, and OOK, and homogeneous PDM‐16‐ary quadrature‐amplitude modulation (16QAM).