First-Order PMD Outage Prediction Based on Outage Maps

We compare the applicability of different methods for the calculation of first order polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) outage probabilities under the Maxwellian probability density assumption for the differential group delay. Results based on measured outage maps are contrasted with outage predictions using various simplifying approximations. We present a comprehensive data set of measured PMD outage maps at 10.7 Gb/s using non return-to-zero and return-to-zero on-off keying in combination with both standard threshold detection and maximum likelihood sequence estimation, with and without residual chromatic dispersion.