AbstractWith the continually improving performance of long‐distance optical communication systems, it becomes important to administer and control wavelength dispersion of the optical fiber. In this paper, a method of measurement of the group velocity dispersion (GVD) of an optical fiber using optical frequency domain reflectometry is proposed. In this scheme, frequency‐chirped light is used as a light source and the total dispersion of the GVD of the optical fiber is measured from the variations of the optical frequency chirp rate after transmission through the fiber. In this method, the GVD value versus the optical wavelength can be measured directly. Another characteristic is that the effect of measurement error due to fluctuations of the fiber under test can be neglected. An experimental verification of the present scheme was performed with a frequency‐shifted feedback laser, which is an ideal linear chirped light source. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 85(2): 1–7, 2002