I. Introduction
Polarization-Mode Dispersion (PMD) is one of the obstacles facing the next generation of optical fiber communication systems [1]. Since the birefringence of installed optical fiber varies randomly with respect to both time and wavelength, the effect of PMD on a system is stochastic in nature. This problem is dealt with by allotting a power penalty to PMD. The outage probability (i.e., the probability of the PMD-induced penalty exceeding this allowed value), then becomes a key measure of the reliability of a system.