No abstract

Light from a pulsed GaAs injection laser is coupled into a glass fiber via a taper coupler. The time dependence of the light backscattered within the fiber as the pulse travels down the waveguide is recorded. From these data the total loss may be determined, as well as an estimate of the scattering and mode mixing characteristics of the fiber.

By using an optical time domain reflectometer a new measurement technique which allows displaying the length dependence of the fiber attenuation by analyzing backscattered light has been developed. This paper compares the backscatter and insertion-loss techniques. In addition, results of several experiments which illustrate the versatility of an optical time domain reflectometer are described.

No abstract

No abstract