Accelerated outage probability testing for PMD induced impairment

We have proposed a method of accelerated outage probability testing (AOPT) for polarization-mode-dispersion (PMD) induced penalty, analogous to the accelerated aging testing (AAT) for the device reliability. We find that the square of the mean PMD in AOPT is equivalent to the temperature in AAT. By increasing the mean PMD of the system tested, the outage probability is exponentially accelerated. Using this approach, for the first time, long-term performance on the order of years can be deduced by conducting a short-term (days) test.