Abstract

We study the statistics of polarization dependent loss (PDL) in optical systems, discuss its evolution with system length and explore its effect on the performance of fiber-optic systems. The distribution of PDL is rigorously shown to be Maxwellian when it is expressed in decibels. The penalties to system performance are shown to be related to the reduction of optical signal to noise ratio. We find that PDL induced penalties in WDM systems are frequently dominated by the coupling of orthogonally emitted noise into the state of polarization of the signal.

© 2002 Optical Society of America