Assessment of the polarisation loss dependence of transoceanic systems using a recirculating loop

Preliminary results on the effect of polarisation loss on the performance of transoceanic systems are presented. Data transmission on the lowest loss polarisation state resulted in a 2.5 Gbit/s noise limited system performance to 20000 km. However, introducing a polarisation dependent loss (PDL) of 0.125 dB per span resulted in a 10−5 BER floor at 6000 km.