Impact of Polarization Mode Dispersion in Multi-Hop and Multi-Rate WDM Rings

Fiber polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is perhaps the most critical transmission impairment in optical networks at transmission rates of 10 Gb/s and higher. Since the bandwidth-distance product, or transparency,of the optical circuit is limited by PMD, the overall network design and cost may be significantly altered by the actual fiber PMD values. The paper has three objectives. First, an accurate model for evaluating the PMD effects is presented and verified experimentally. Second, the cost increase of WDM rings due to PMD in a number of design scenarios—first generation, single-hop,multi-hop, and multi-rate networks—is assessed. Third, the polynomial-time algorithm proposed in Cerutti et al. 1] is modified to provide sub-optimal solutions for the above WDM rings, taking into account the limited bandwidth-distance product imposed by PMD. Presented results reveal that at high transmission rates, the cost of the multi-hop ring is less affected by PMD than the costs of first generation and single-hop rings.