Abstract

Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is a major performance limiting factor in pushing broadband lightwave communication systems beyond l0Gb/s. Due to the statistical nature of PMD within a fiber, a PMD emulator is an important tool for characterizing PMD and PMD induced system penalties by cycling through the various PMD states expected in an optical fiber. Current lùgli order PMD emulators are all based on the concept of a series of biréfringent elements with independently tunable DGD or coupling angles. While statistical tunability of the produced DGD lias been reported using tins type of emulator design, deterministically generating the exact DGD profile desired by the user may be difficult. With deterministic controllability of the DGD emulator, techniques such as importance sampling can be applied to more efficiently study PMD effects. Also, in a typical PMD emulator where all optical channels are fed through the same optical elements, the DGD statistics of different channels can not be independently controlled. In tins paper, we report on a lùgli spectral-resolution Fourier pulse shaper based DGD emulator design which can be programmed to possess essentially arbitrary DGD vs. frequency profiles for multiple channels simultaneously and independently. First-order PMD range has been tested up to +400ps with an accuracy of approximately lps. Higher order DGD profiles have also been demonstrated and shown excellent agreement with theoretically simulated results.

© 2007 IEEE