Optical fiber identification using Rayleigh backscattered light

The remote identification of fibers from an office is a key technology for automatically updating the wiring database of an optical fiber network. This work proposes a new fiber identification method that uses the spatial dependency of the power of Rayleigh backscattered light. The power correlation coefficient of one component of the backscattered light, polarized in a fixed direction, is shown to be an effective feature for fiber identification. Five lengths of fiber are accurately identified with the proposed method.<>