Measurement of the differential group delay in installed optical fibers using polarization multiplexed solitons

Author

Bakhshi, Bamdad ; Hansryd, Jonas ; Andrekson, Peter A. ; Brentel, Jonas ; Kolltveit, Erling ; Olsson, Bengt-Erik ; Karlsson, Magnus

Author_Institution

Dept. of Microelectron., Chalmers Univ. of Technol., Goteborg, Sweden

Volume

11

Issue

5

fYear

1999

fDate

5/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

593

Lastpage

595

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a new technique for measurement of the differential group delay (DGD) in optical fibers using polarization-division multiplexed (PDM) solitons: the change in the separation of orthogonally polarized solitons propagating along different principal axes in a fiber equals the DGD at the signal wavelength. Based on this principle, we use PDM solitons to measure the accumulated DGD at different distances along a 400-km installed fiber. The measured DGD exhibits the expected square-root-of-length dependence, corresponding to a polarization-mode dispersion of 0.26 ps/km/sup 1/2/. The results are in excellent agreement with those obtained by a commercial instrument utilizing Jones matrix eigenanalysis.

Keywords

delays; eigenvalues and eigenfunctions; matrix algebra; multiplexing; optical fibre communication; optical fibre polarisation; optical fibre testing; optical solitons; 400 km; Jones matrix eigenanalysis; PDM solitons; accumulated DGD; differential group delay measurement; expected square-root-of-length dependence; installed optical fibers; orthogonally polarized solitons; polarization multiplexed solitons; polarization-division multiplexed solitons; polarization-mode dispersion; principal axes; Delay; Optical fiber communication; Optical fiber polarization; Optical fibers; Optical propagation; Optical pulses; Polarization mode dispersion; Pulse measurements; Solitons; Wavelength measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.759409

Filename

759409