Frequency and Duration of Communication System Outages Resulting From Polarization Mode Dispersion

In this paper, we employ measurements of transponder tolerance to both differential group delay (DGD) and second-order polarization mode dispersion (SOPMD) and of the temporal evolution of DGD and SOPMD in installed transmission systems to predict the influence of PMD on the rate and duration of PMD-induced system outages. An empirical 2-D random-walk model predicts that the outage rate and duration depends solely on the mean fiber DGD. We find that the step size of the random walk is nearly uncorrelated with the instantaneous value of the PMD. We then justify the assumptions of this procedure with a full numerical simulation and employ a biased Markov chain algorithm to generate highly accurate results for system outages where simplified models fail.