Time resolved chirp measurement based on a polarization-maintaining fiber

In high speed optical networks, quantifying both the intensity and the frequency behaviors of optical signals has become a crucial task to evaluate transmission performance. In this letter, we report on a new technique to characterize optical signals. It is based on low cost components and its operating mode is easy to provide accurate and fast measurements. The proposed technique is experimentally validated with signals whose characteristics are known. It is also tested with different optical transmitters.