Optical Vector Network Analyzer With Improved Accuracy Based on Brillouin-Assisted Optical Carrier Processing

We propose a new method to improve the accuracy of an optical vector network analyzer (OVNA) based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF). Generally, the measurement error of the OVNA mainly derives from the beat signals between adjacent optical sidebands. In this paper, the measurement error is significantly suppressed using a two-step measurement process. For the first measurement, both the transmission response of an optical device-under-test (ODUT) and the measurement error are recorded. For the second measurement, only the measurement error is obtained by suppressing the optical carrier using SBS in the DSF. The accurate transmission response of the ODUT is subsequently extracted by subtracting the error from the first measurement. The proposed method is theoretically investigated and experimentally demonstrated. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the OVNA is significantly improved.