Distributed measurement of the chromatic dispersion of an optical fiber using a wavelength-tunable OTDR

Author

Murdoch, Stuart G. ; Svendsen, David A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys., Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand

Volume

24

Issue

4

fYear

2006

fDate

4/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1681

Lastpage

1688

Abstract

In this paper, a distributed measurement of the chromatic dispersion (CD) of an optical fiber is presented. The measurement is based on the analysis of a set of bidirectional optical time domain reflectometer traces collected over the wavelength range of interest. To calculate the distributed CD of the fiber, several approximations are required. The validity of these approximations is verified via a numerical simulation for both step-index and dispersion-shifted fibers (DSFs). These simulations allow the placement of an upper bound on the error of the measurement. Experimentally, measurements of both step-index and DSFs are reported.

Keywords

measurement errors; optical fibre dispersion; optical fibre testing; optical time-domain reflectometry; bidirectional reflectometer traces; chromatic dispersion; dispersion-shifted fibers; distributed measurement; measurement error; optical fiber; optical time domain reflectometer; step-index fibers; wavelength-tunable OTDR; Chromatic dispersion; Fiber nonlinear optics; Nonlinear optics; Optical fiber polarization; Optical fibers; Optical mixing; Optical pumping; Optical scattering; Stimulated emission; Wavelength measurement; Chromatic-dispersion (CD) measurement; mode field diameter (MFD) measurement; optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2006.871010

Filename

1618757