Compensating the first-order PMD by using a novel tunable compensator

With increasing bit-rate PMD (polarization mode dispersion) is becoming major system impairment. As the birefringence of a fiber changes randomly along a fiber link and the state-of-polarization (SOP) of an optical signal changes, with environmental conditions, PMD effects on the data signal are stochastic and time varying. Consequently, compensation of PMD, especially for the first-order PMD is necessary to maintain adequate performance in long-haul systems at a high bit rate of 10 Gbit/s or beyond. In this paper, we successfully demonstrated automatic and tunable compensation for first-order polarization-mode dispersion. Furthermore, we reported the statistical assessment of this tunable compensator at 10 Gbit/s. Experimental results, including bit error rate measurements, are successfully compared with theory, therefore demonstrating the compensator efficiency at 10 Gbit/s. The first-order PMD was max 274 ps before PMD compensation, and it was lower than 7ps after PMD compensation.