Effects of PMD with random mode coupling on 2.48 Gb/s IM-DD lightwave systems

Effects of Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) on 2.48 Gb/s IM-DD lightwave systems are experimentally observed by using PMD emulators made with segments of highly birefringent fiber with random mode coupling splices. Random birefringence between mode couplings was also included in the emulator. The measurements indicate that the eye diagram is corrupted by PMD values above 10 ps. BER measurements show more than 1.5 dB power penalty for PMD values of 30 ps.