PMD-supported coherent optical OFDM systems

Abstract

Although polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) greatly impairs conventional high-speed single-carrier systems, it is shown that for multicarrier systems such as coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexed systems (CO-OFDM), not only does PMD not cause any impairment, but it also provides a benefit of polarization diversity against polarization - dependent -loss-induced fading and consequently improves the system margin. The PMD benefit to fiber nonlinearity reduction in CO-OFDM systems is also predicted. © 2007 IEEE.