Difficulties involving dynamic polarization-based impairment measurements using Jones matrices

Abstract

The concurrent realization of multiple polarization-based link impairments such as polarization-mode dispersion, polarization-dependent loss, and differential-attenuation slope creates a nontrivial measurement and analysis problem. The difficulties concerning the robustness of raw data, of minimizing drift artifacts experienced during multiple wavelength measurements, and the analysis methods that lead to physical significant interpretations are addressed. Measurements of an in-service wavelength-division-multiplexed metro-area network are presented that explicitly illustrate the limitations when using industry-standard commercial test equipment.

Reduction of coating induced polarization aberrations by controlling the polarization state variation

“…Many excellent works in this domain have been carried out in the past [11][12][13]. The Jones matrix is a universal approach to describe such optical processes at interfaces, if all scattering and depolarization can be neglected [3,14,15]. With the theory of Jones, any optical element in optics can be represented as a linear operator acting upon the light field.…”