Polarization mode dispersion compensator field trial and field fiber characterization

Abstract

Two high-PMD long distance routes were characterized and used to test an optical polarization mode dispersion compensator (PMDC) under field conditions. For this trial, 110 km routes with mean PMD values of 25 and 26.5 ps were provisioned with commercial WDM transport equipment and tested for several weeks. The route was comprised of three spans of characterized fiber that followed railroad tracks. We show the temporal variation of the output polarization state and the evolution of first-and second-order PMD spectra over 7 days. The deployment of a variablelength PMDC on these links allowed error-free transmission of an OC-192 signal. Splitting the output to receivers with and without PMDC demonstrated specific PMD events that caused errors in the absence of a PMDC.

Noise immunity-optimized polarimeter using modified polarization state analyzer

“…The Poincaré angular error predicted by an inner product   =(  ) , however, is not zero-mean (for   >0). For simplicity, we estimate the mean of Poincaré angular error by using a constant vector  in place of  , where  is a constant to be determined and   are the (normalized) standard deviations of the four measured powers p' 1,2,3,4 . In Fig.…”

“…Measurement of the state of polarization (SOP) of electromagnetic waves is useful in remote sensing [1], astronomy [2], and high-speed fiber telecommunications where the bandwidth could be limited by polarizationmode dispersion (PMD) [3]. It is known that SOP can be determined by measuring the relative powers of (at least) four polarization components of the test SOP [4].…”

<title>Multichannel optical PMD compensator</title>

“…4,5 These compensators typically have implemented single-stage first-order PMD compensators, or two-stage devices with limited degrees of freedom. The primary obstacle to full-degree-of-freedom second-order PMD compensation has been the lack of a robust algorithm for determining the delay line settings for a higher-order compensator based on the indirect Figures of Merit typically available.…”

PMD emulation

“…These outages may happen for only a few minutes per year and will depend on the average DGD value and environmental changes. For example, in a 25-day field trial, 10-Gbit/s data was transmitted over a 110-km route containing fiber manufactured in 1994 with an average PMD of ∼ 25 ps and the system receiver (without PMD compensation) lost synchronization due to PMD for several seconds on three separate instances [6]. Thus, in order to characterize the effects of PMD on transmitter/receiver pairs and PMD compensation systems, one must repeatedly measure the system performance over a wide sample space of PMD states.…”