PMD and PDL impairments in polarization division multiplexing signals with direct detection

We investigate polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization dependent loss (PDL) impairments in polarization division multiplexing (PDM) signals with optical polarization demultiplexing and direct detection. We find that the time alignment between the bits in the two polarizations has a significant impact on the PMD impairments, and PMD impairments also depend on the bandwidth of PDM signals, whereas PDL impairments have little dependence on the relative time alignment between the two polarizations and the signal bandwidth. We show that with a proper configuration of the polarization demultiplexing, the PDL-induced crosstalk between the two polarizations can be completely eliminated. The combined effects of PMD and PDL are also studied, and we find that, in the presence of concatenated PMD and PDL, the impairment from one effect does not enhance that from the other. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America