A polarimetric sensor array with 10 segments of 10m each

We present an improved design of a low-loss polarimetric sensor array, which was implemented by splicing stages of polarization maintaining fiber of equal length. The new design, which is based on a judicious choice of the coupling angles between consecutive segments, allows concatenating an increased number of stages compared with previous designs. We show that the system¿s output signal power distribution in the time domain has a strong effect on its phase detecting abilities under realistic conditions. Finally, we show by a computer simulation and an experiment that for 10 fiber stages the coupling angle should be near 100 in order to minimize the detection error.