Automatic Polarization Compensation Tracking Method for Maximum Visibility of Fiber Interferometric Sensors

This study presents an automatic polarization compensation tracking method to obtain and maintain maximum visibility of Mach-Zehnder interferometric sensors using an active polarization controller. This method uses the 3-axes fiber squeezer polarization controller (FSPC). In this tracking method, the step voltage is the key parameter of the trade-off between recovery time and visibility resolution. In the Mach-Zehnder interferometer experiments, the average recovery time is 5.4 s and maximum visibility remains between 0.98 and 1, which shows the excellent performances of this tracking method. This tracking method is suitable for compensating the polarization fading of two independent interference path interferometric sensors.