Abstract
The combined effect of polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization-dependent loss (PDL) is investigated experimentally using a recirculating fiber-loop testbed for 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero transmissions over an 800-km fiber link. We find that the PDL of inline components combined with the link PMD will increase the penalty distribution. As the average link PDL varies from 1.0 to 2.1 dB with an average PMD of 18 ps, the system penalty distribution tail at 2% probability increases from 2.5 to 4.3 dB.