Abstract
Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is the differential group delay between two differently polarized modes in single mode fibers, which is a serious limiting factor for high bit rate optical telecommunication systems. In our previous work, a novel measurement method of PMD in optical fibers has been proposed, which is based on coherent optical frequency domain reflectometry technique (OFDR). In the method, a frequency-shifted feedback (FSF) fiber laser was developed as light source; PMD is determined by self-delayed heterodyne detection from the beat frequency generated by interference between lights from the Fresnel reflection at the far end of the fiber. In this work, both theoretical and experimental comparisons are made between the proposed method and other International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication standardization (ITU-T) recommended methods. Up till now, several kinds of methods have been proposed by different groups. According to the bandwidth of light sources, however, two categories can be distinguished: narrow band (quasi-monochromatic) wavelength tunable laser and broadband sources. The characteristic of our proposed method different from the two types of source in that it utilize a FSF laser, with a bandwidth between the narrow band and broadband. We analysis the difference from the view point of laser theory, and imply the effects on PMD measurements. Also experimental comparisons are made with ITU-T PMD Round Robin samples, and experimental results verified the effectiveness of the novel OFDR technique based method.
Published Version
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