The effect of variable PSP angles in a PMD compensator

A polarization mode dispersion compensator (PMDC) composed of two polarization mode dispersion (PMD) elements and one polarization dependent loss (PDL) element is proposed. Simulation shows that, due to the variable angle between the two principal states of polarization (PSPs) of the compensator, the proposed compensator can improve the PMD compensation efficiency for systems with both PMD and PDL, especially when higher order PMD is compensated.