Abstract

Single mode fibres (SMF) are major building blocks in the telecommunication infrastructure. SMFs provide the highest bandwidths and the lowest signal attenuation and therefore they have totally dominated long-distance network links [1]. Among different fibre designs the most widely used is Corning’s low dispersive SMF28, which has established a new standard in telecommunication industry. To be precise SMFs support two orthogonally polarized linear modes simultaneously. In an ideal circular-core fiber, these two modes will propagate with the same phase velocity. However, slight fabrication geometrical inaccuracies, bends or twists introduces small birefringence into the fiber. The magnitude of this birefringence keeps changing randomly with time due to fluctuations in the ambient conditions. Such instabilities in the output state of polarization might introduce bandwidth limiting polarisation mode dispersion and influences performance of polarization sensitive devices.

© 2019 IEEE