Power penalty of cascaded Bragg gratings in the presence of PMD and PDL

Considering the presence of birefringence in Bragg gratings, the spectral polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization dependent loss (PDL) induced power penalty of eye opening is examined for a network with cascaded Bragg gratings. It is shown that when the birefringence in the grating is less than 10−5, the induced power penalty is less than 0.1 dB for a network with up to 30 cascaded Bragg gratings. However, when the grating birefringence is on the order of 10−4, the induced power penalty can be as high as 5.6 dB for a network with 14 cascaded Bragg gratings.