Qualitative analysis of PMD-induced long-haul optical fiber link

Abstract This paper studies the detrimental effect of polarization mode dispersion on long-haul optical fiber communication in terms of the quality factor and bit error rate. The dispersion value is varied for different fiber lengths, specifically for long-haul communication, and the results obtained are analyzed in terms of the quality factor. The polarization mode dispersion causes pulse broadening, leading to interchannel interference. There is a need to check the occurrence and the associated effects of this dispersion. The communication range for conducting the analysis varies from 150 km to 350 km. The analysis is first conducted on varied communication fiber link length for different dispersion values, and it is observed that a fiber length of 200 km gives comparatively favorable results, as seen from the BER analysis.