We propose a novel transmitter and receiver for differential quadrature phase-shift keying (DQPSK) format. The impact of the first-order polarization mode dispersion (PMD) on systems using DQPSK with 100-Gb/s non-return-to-zero (NRZ) or return-to-zero (RZ) format is investigated. Through computing the eye openings of DQPSK formats under different PMD conditions, it is found that NRZ DQPSK, as compared with RZ DQPSK, incurs smaller eye opening due to PMD. Carrier-suppressed return-to-zero (CSRZ) DQPSK format has better tolerance than RZ DQPSK format to PMD for a given bit rate.