Comparison study of the average transfer matrix of first- and second-order PMD

This paper presents numerical simulations of the transfer matrix of polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) in long optical fibers, wherein the average frequency dependence of this matrix is calculated conditioned on various given values of the differential group delay that is introduced between signal components in the two principal states of polarization (PSPs) and the second-order PMD parameter that characterizes frequency-dependent cross coupling between the PSPs. The results are then compared with four popular models of first- and second-order PMDs (F&SO-PMD), and it is found that none of them describes the average Jones matrix of F&SO-PMD with acceptable accuracy over the entire range of PMD parameters and optical bandwidth of interest. The differences between the various models and the simulation results are particularly large when the frequency-dependent cross coupling is large.