Abstract:

With the aid of modeling a long optical fiber with 1 000 cascaded small fiber segments, the statistical dependence existed between the first-and the second-order polarization mode dispersion (PMD) vector was numerically simulated. The simulated result shows that: the higher the PMD value of an optical fiber is, the larger range the covering of the polarization-dependent chromatic dispersion (PCD), the principal state of polarization (PSP) rotation rate, and the depolarization become. For a specified PMD value, with the increasing of differential group delay, the averaged PCD keeps constant; the averaged depolarization and second-order PMD will be increased linearly; but the averaged PSP rotation rate will be decreased rapidly. It is also shown that the depolarization will play a role of domination in the second-order PMD, and PCD will only have a little contribution.

Key words: polarization mode dispersion, polarization-dependent chromatic dispersion, depola-rization