Penalties in long-haul optical amplifier systems due to polarization dependent loss and gain

The impact of polarization dependent gain (PDG) and polarization dependent loss (PDL) in long-haul optical amplifier systems is studied by means of a power analysis accounting for PDG, PDL and polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in the saturation regime of the erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs). System penalties are characterized in terms of mean values and standard deviations. Mean penalties on the bit-error-ratio (BER) are directly related to PDG. BER fluctuations are found to be greatly enhanced when PDG and PDL are combined. The impact of PMD is dependent on the values for PDG and PDL. >