Complete Characterization of Polarization-Maintaining Fibers Using Distributed Polarization Analysis

We present methods and processes of using a ghost-peak-free distributed polarization crosstalk analyzer (DPXA) to accurately obtain all polarization related parameters of polarization-maintaining (PM) fibers. We show that by first inducing a series equidistant periodic polarization crosstalk peaks along a PM fiber and then measuring the positions and the widths of these peaks using the analyzer, all birefringence related parameters of the PM fiber, including group birefringence, group birefringence variation along the fiber, group birefringence dispersion, and group birefringence temperature coefficient, can be accurately obtained. We further show that the DPXA has the ability to identify and eliminate polarization crosstalk contributions of connectors or splices in the measurement system and therefore can be used to obtain high accuracy measurement of the polarization extinction ratio (PER) of PM fibers. Finally, we propose a set of parameters based on the distributed polarization analysis to quantitatively evaluate the quality of PM fibers. We believe that the methods and processes described in this paper can be widely applied in the industry for the complete characterization of PM optical fibers.