Polarization-mode dispersion in high-speed fiber-optic transmission systems

We review recent research related to polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in fiber-optic transmission systems operating at 40 Gb/s and above. We investigate the benefits of using different passive techniques for mitigating the effects of PMD, including more advantageous data formats compared to the conventional nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) format, soliton transmission, and forward error correction (FEC). We also compare a number of active pre- and posttransmission compensators.