Measurement of Chromatic Dispersion using the Baseband Radio-Frequency Response of a Phase-Modulated Analog Optical Link Employing a Reference Fiber

摘要

In this work we demonstrate a new technique for measuring the chromatic dispersion of an optical fiber using the baseband RF response of a phase-modulated analog optical link in concert with a well-characterized fiber that serves as a dispersion reference. We show that optical phase modulation provides increased measurement resolution and immunity to optical modulator bias-drift as compared to baseband methods utilizing optical intensity modulation. In addition, we provide a simple derivation of the dispersion response of a long analog optical link to both intensity- and phase-modulated signals and derive simple expressions for the resolution of baseband chromatic dispersion measurements employing both types of modulation.