Polarization mode dispersion reduction in optical fibers

Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) is a kind of modal dispersion usually associated with Single Mode Fibers (SMF). It is measured in picoseconds per square root of kilometer as it is proportional to the square root of the length of the fiber. It is one of the serious impairments which limit the data rate in long distance transmission and high speed communication systems. It severely degrades the system performance and causes pulse broadening. PMD has negligible effect on low data rate systems but it affects the bandwidth distance product severely in high data rate systems. Being time varying, it increases the Bit Error Rate (BER) in long distance communication. Hence, compensation of PMD is essential. This paper adopts the use of polarizer for compensating PMD along with an optical delay element, where the delay factor is predetermined based on the simulation bandwidth. With the Deterministic Differential Group Delay (DDGD) algorithm, PMD gets compensated to the original pulse duration and BER less than 0.99999E-40 is achieved.