Patent ID: 7590355

Claim:
A method of mitigating polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) in a wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) optical communications system having at least one transmission link with at least one quasi-static waveguide section coupled by one or more non-static coupling sections, the method comprising: transmitting optical signals through at least one transmission link on multiple WDM channels, the WDM channels having a spectral spacing of at least approximately a PMD correlation bandwidth of the at least one quasi-static waveguide section, whereby a PMD induced outage probability is optimized, wherein the multiple WDM channels comprise a first set of WDM channels and a second set of WDM channels, the first set of WDM channels having a spectral spacing between adjacent WDM channels of the first set of at least approximately the PMD correlation bandwidth and the second set of WDM channels having a spectral spacing between adjacent WDM channels of the second set of at least approximately the PMD correlation bandwidth.