Fading in lightwave systems due to polarization-mode dispersion

System fading caused by polarization-mode dispersion is investigated at 1.7 Gb/s using highly-birefringent, dispersion-shifted fiber at 1.55 μm. The observed fading, which is manifested by random fluctuations of the bit error rate for a fixed receiver power, is observed to depend on the environmental conditions of the fiber, with the time constant for fading varying from minutes to hours depending on the rate of change of the ambient temperature. The mean dispersion penalty inferred from the observed fluctuations in the bit error rate is consistent with a square-law dependence on the polarization-mode dispersion for small penalties