Polarization diversity receiver for PMD mitigation

In this contribution, we present a novel polarization diversity receiver and show that by using simple fixed optics and electronics we can obtain significantly better performance than is possible with the use of an equalizer (with no diversity) that requires optimization of the filter taps by some means. We also show that there is little additional improvement by incorporating electronic equalization into the diversity receiver structure, as the diversity structure eliminates the major part of the intersymbol interference (ISI) due to PMD.