MLSE receiver tolerance to all-order polarization mode dispersion

We experimentally characterize a maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MSLE) based receiver's tolerance to first- and all-order polarization mode dispersion (PMD). We show that the response of the MLSE receiver to first-order PMD can be characterized in two ways depending on the differential group delay (DGD). In addition we show that first-order PMD-induced system penalties dominate those from high-order PMD. High-order PMD induces a large system penalty only when the first-order penalty is small, or the DGD exceeds a bit period. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.