Structure and Needed Properties of Reasonable Polarization Mode Dispersion Emulators for Coherent Optical Fiber Transmission

Abstract: This paper proposes a scientifically reasonable polarization mode dispersion (PMD) emulator (PMDE) for coherent optical fiber transmission. Guidelines are physically correct modeling of the polarization-dispersive fiber, the time-variable polarization transformations occurring in there, including emulation of polarization events caused by lightning strikes, the adoption of acceptable compromise to keep implementation cost low enough and competitive industrial basis for production of such PMDE. We propse a PMDE consisting of N differential group delay (DGD) sections placed between N+1 time-variable general retarders or polarization scramblers. These should be general elliptical retarders, capable of changing polarization with rates up to 20 Mrad/s on the Poincar\'e sphere. That should include bursts of polarization rotations forth and back at up to 20 Mrad/s. The DGD sections can be fixed or variable and should be able to constitute a total PMD of alternatively, say, 20 ps, 50 ps, 100 ps, 200 ps, or another set of various discrete values. We propose even N and equal individual DGDs, which allows the total PMDE to assume a neutral state without any PMD of whatever order. Number N may be chosen relatively small; N = 2 seems acceptable. A variety of component and subsystem suppliers is available, and the proposed PMDE is available on the market.