Abstract: We reviewed the origin and impact of the cross polarization modulation (XpolM) effect. An analysis of the Manakov equation has been carried out in order to differentiate between XpolM and XPM effects. Based on this analysis, it has been argued that the impact of XpolM may have been overestimated so far. To verify this statement, the performance of a 112Gb/s DP-QPSK channel over 10Gb/s legacy system has been investigated with the help of numerical simulations. We showed that the impact of XpolM is smaller than the impact of XPM and intra-channel nonlinearities (iXPM, iFWM). Our presented results assessing the impact of the XpolM effect confirmed theoretical predictions that have been reported in. Finally, our investigations have shown that the impact of XpolM-induced distortion is reduced by PMD.

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