PMD Source/Emulator

The PMD-1000 uses birefringent crystals and ternary magneto optic rotators to generate PMD. Its PMD switching time is as little as one millisecond. Its quasi-continuous operation mode enables independent generation of first order and wavelength independent second order PMD for uniform coverage of the PMD space.

In addition to generating static combinations of DGD and SOPMD, the PMD-1000 can perform grid and continuous-trace PMD scans and PMD statistical emulation.

The PMD-1000 also contains a polarization controller and two polarimeters, located before and after the PMD generating element. The polarization controller can be used to polarization scramble the input signal to the PMD generator to average out the effect of input polarization. For single-polarization signals, the polarization controller and polarimeters enable the instrument to automatically adjust the input polarization to obtain the worst case PMD effect at any PMD setting, or to perform optical PMD compensation. Similarly, for single-polarization signals, the instrument can perform deterministic polarization control functions, including trace generation and polarization stabilization at any SOP.