Optical fiber chromatic dispersion measurement using bidirectional modulation of an optical intensity modulator

We have proposed a simple method for measuring the chromatic dispersion and the time delay of optical fiber by using bidirectional modulation of a Mach-Zehnder modulator. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, we have measured the chromatic dispersion of optical fiber with length of 2.235 km by using this method over wavelength of 1500-1580 nm. The difference between the measured and the given chromatic dispersion is less than 0.19 ps/nm/km over the measured wavelength range.