Specialty Optical Fibers Handbook

dynamic adjustments must be made on a per-channel basis (for each transmis-

sion wavelength).

This section will not attempt to cover the full spectrum of PMD topics. The

intent is rather to give a basic understanding of the phenomenon and a few

references for the interested reader. A more comprehensive review can be found

in reference [36]. The requirements imposed by high-speed digital transmission

are addressed in Chapter 5.

2.8.2 Background

The first concept to be understood is that of lightwave polarization, because

PMD originates when different light polarizations travel at different average

speeds in the optical fiber. The polarization of light (or any electromagnetic

wave) is a description of how the electric field vector of the wave varies