Chebyshev and Taylor approximations of polarization mode dispersion for improved compensation bandwidth

We examine a series of experimentally realizable procedures for wide-bandwidth polarization mode dispersion compensation based on Taylor and Chebyshev approximations to the transfer matrix for light polarization in optical fibers. Our results demonstrate that a symmetric ordering of compensator elements in the Taylor procedure improves performance and that methods based on the Chebyshev approximation can significantly widen the compensation bandwidth.