Efficient computation of outage probabilities due to polarization effects in a WDM system using a reduced Stokes model and importance sampling

We propose a technique that uses Monte Carlo simulations with importance sampling and a reduced Stokes model to compute the probability density function of the Q factor and the outage probability for a channel in a long-haul wavelength-division-multiplexed optical-fiber transmission system due to the combination of polarization mode dispersion, polarization dependent loss, and polarization dependent gain. This technique allows us to compute outage probabilities as small as 10/sup -6/ at a fraction of the computational cost required by standard Monte Carlo simulations.