PMD-induced penalty statistics in fiber links

We study the statistics of polarization-mode dispersion (PMD)-induced system penalty in optical telecommunication systems. First, we extend the analysis from Maxwellian fiber-to-fiber routes with a finite number of degrees of freedom, or "hinges". Second, we take into account higher order terms in the optical signal-to-noise ratio penalty beyond the standard approximation. Our results show that in systems with few hinges, a smaller margin to PMD will result in the same outage probability.