The generation of surface plasmon resonances (SPRs) in gold-coated weakly tilted fiber Bragg gratings (TFBGs) strongly depends on the state of polarization of the core guided light. Recently, it was demonstrated that rotating the linear state of polarization of the guided light by 90° with respect to the grating tilt allows to turn the SPR on and off. In this work, we measure the Jones matrix associated to the TFBG transmission properties in order to be able to analyze different polarization-related parameters (i.e. dependency on wavelength of polarization dependent loss and first Stokes parameter). As they contain the information about the SPR, they can be used as a robust and accurate demodulation technique for refractometry purposes. Unlike other methods reported so far, a tight control of the input state of polarization is not required. The maximum error on refractive index measurement has been determined to be ~1 10(-5) refractive index unit (RIU), 5 times better than intensity-based measurements on the same sensors.

No abstract

Motivations, challenges and requirements of optical layer monitoring in PONs are discussed. An exhaustive review of monitoring systems is given considering both Time-Division Multiplexed PON (TDM-PON) and Wavelength-Division Multiplexed PON (WDM-PON) cases.

No abstract

Abstract:A new method for monitoring the nonlinearities perturbing the optical frequency sweep in high speed tunable laser sources is presented. The swept-frequency monitoring system comprises a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and simple signal processing steps. It has been implemented in a coherent optical frequency domain reflectometer which allowed to drastically reduce the effects of nonlinear sweep, resulting to a spatial resolution enhancement of 30 times.

We report highly birefringent fiber Bragg gratings in standard single-mode optical fiber realized with UV femtosecond pulses and line-by-line inscription. By controlling the three-dimensional positioning of the focused laser beam with respect to the fiber core, we achieve very high birefringence at the grating location in a single exposure. A maximum birefringence value of 7.93×10(-4) has been reached for 10th-order gratings when using 2 μJ pulses, which is to our knowledge the highest birefringence value reported so far. This birefringence results from UV-induced high-densification lines shifted from the center of the core, increasing the asymmetry of the induced-stress lines. With a Bragg wavelength spacing reaching more than 800 pm between polarization modes, such gratings are particularly well suited for selective filtering or, as demonstrated here, for temperature-insensitive transverse-strain measurements.

No abstract

In this paper, we discuss the operation principles, challenges and application areas of optical frequency domain reflectometry technique. A review of OFDR systems is given considering both Incoherent-OFDR and Coherent-OFDR groups. Results obtained by different research groups are compared in terms of performance characteristics, and future perspectives. Recent progresses obtained within our laboratory are also presented.