  In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of polarization tracking
algorithms in optical transmission systems suffering from fast state of
polarization (SOP) rotations and polarization-dependent loss (PDL). While most
of the gradient descent (GD)-based algorithms in the literature may require
step size adjustment when the channel condition changes, we propose tracking
algorithms that can perform similarly or better without parameter tuning.
Numerical simulation results show higher robustness of the proposed algorithms
to SOP and PDL drift compared to GD-based algorithms, making them promising
candidates to be used in aerial fiber links where the SOP can potentially drift
rapidly, and therefore becomes challenging to track.
