STATISTICAL PREDICTION AND EXPERIMENTAL-VERIFICATION OF CONCATENATIONS OF FIBER OPTIC COMPONENTS WITH POLARIZATION-DEPENDENT LOSS

Due to the statistical nature of the evolution of the polarization sta te in optical fibers and components, it is difficult to measure the gl obal polarization dependent loss (PDL) of a series of concatenated com ponents, each having a different PDL value. The global PDL of concaten ated components with PDL cannot be obtained by a simple addition of th e single PDL values, moreover, it requires a statistical description. In the present, work the statistics of the PDL resulting from the conc atenation of several components with PDL, connected by standard optica l fibers or by elements having some polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is discussed. Simulations and experimental results supporting the exi sting theory are presented.