Advances in modeling optical fiber transmission systems

Good modeling of optical fiber transmission systems has become critical to design them efficiently. Much has been accomplished in recent years, and my own group has contributed in important ways to this development. During 2001 we have applied importance sampling to calculating the outage probability of polarisation mode dispersion compensators, and we have shown that it is possible to accurately calculate the probability distribution functions of the receiver voltage for the marks and the spaces. While much remains to be done to achieve the ultimate goal of accurately modeling bit error rates, much has been accomplished.