Effect of cross-phase modulation on first order PMD compensation in WDM system

This paper introduces the Cross-phase Modulation (XPM) firstly. XPM changes the state-of-polarization (SOP) of the channels that leads to amplitude modulation of the propagating waves in a wave-division multiplexing (WDM) system. Due to the presence of Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD), the angles between the SOP of the channels change randomly and the modulation amplitude fluctuation in the perturbed channel becomes random. Then the effect of XPM on performance of first order PMD compensation in the WDM system is analyzed and numerically simulated. The eye diagrams with XPM and without XPM are given. We can see that the XPM reduces the eye opening to some extent and results in weakening the performance of first order PMD compensation.