Traceability study of optical fiber degree of polarization (DOP) measurement

Abstract

Degree of polarization (DOP) is an important physical quantity for describing the optical polarization effect and is widely applied in optical fiber communication, optical fiber gyro and the related technologies. Currently, the optical polarization degree tester for the purpose of communication uses mainly two kinds of measurement methods: Stokes vector method and extremum method. At present, there isn’t a standard to measure the accuracy and consistency of DOP parameter measurement by the devices listed above, affecting seriously the application of DOP parameter measurement in the fields of optical fiber gyro and optical fiber communication. So, it is urgent to table the accurate guarantees to trace the source of quantitative values of the DOP measuring devices and testers. In this paper, the polarization beam combination method is raised to research and manufacture the standard optical fiber light source device with the variable DOP, and an indicated error measurement has been conducted for a DOP meter. A kind of standard optical fiber light source device that uses a single light source to realize the variable DOP is put forward. It is used to provide the accurate and variable optical fiber polarization degree light with a scope of 0～100%. It is used to calibrate the DOP meters and widely applied in the field of national defense and optical communication fields. By using the standard optical power meter, DOP value by which the optical power meter calculates the optical signal can be measured, which will be used ultimately for calibration of the DOP meter. A measurement uncertainty of 0.5% is obtained using the polarization beam combination method.