Abstract
A new technique for measuring optical-fiber-attenuation characteristics is described. The technique uses stimulated Brillouin scattering in the fiber between a counterpropagating pulsed pump wave and a cw Stokes probe wave. Fiber attenuation is estimated nondestructively from amplification of the probe wave through stimulated Brillouin scattering. Experiments with a 5.2-km-long single-mode fiber reveal that the output signal is approximately 100 times that of the Rayleigh backscattered signal observed in conventional optical time-domain reflectometry. The signal fluctuation due to polarization-dependent Brillouin gain is successfully removed by polarization averaging.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Valeri I. Kovalev and Robert G. Harrison
Opt. Lett. 29(4) 379-381 (2004)
Hiroki Itoh, Gillian M. Davis, and Shoichi Sudo
Opt. Lett. 14(24) 1368-1370 (1989)
Jean Botineau, Claude Leycuras, Carlos Montes, and Eric Picholle
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 6(3) 300-312 (1989)