Polarization Mode Dispersion Compensation In Optical Fiber Communication Systems

As the bit rate in optical fiber transmission approaches 40 Gb/s per wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) channel and beyond, impairments of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) become increasingly important. In the past 15 years, the subject of PMD in optical fibers has seen the development of a considerable knowledge base numbering over 400 publications. However, PMD remains a challenging problem in the field of optical fiber communications.In this thesis, different PMD compensation systems are studied, by theoretical analysis and Monte-Carlo simulations. The main results are: [1] two schemes for full first- and second-order PMD compensation are proposed, and the main advantage of these schemes over the schemes reported so far is that they show excellent robustness to all possible perturbations; [2] PMD induced optical signal polarization degradation is analyzed and simulated, and the limit of employing optical signal degree of polarization (DOP) as feedback signal for PMD compensation is pointed out.