In this paper a compact polarization beam splitter based on a deformed photonic crystal directional coupler is designed and simulated. The transverse-electric (TE) guided mode and transverse-magnetic (TM) guided mode are split due to different guiding mechanisms. The effect of the shape deformation of the air holes on the coupler is studied. It discovered that the coupling strength of the coupled wavegnides is strongly enhanced by introducing elliptical airholes, which reduce the device length to less than 18.5μm. A finite-difference time-domain simulation is performed to evaluate the performance of the device, and the extinction ratios for both TE and TM polarized light are higher than 20 dB.