A method which utilizes a Kerr phase-interrogator to measure the group birefringence dispersion (GBD) of a polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) is systematically studied in this paper. The differential group delay of two sinusoidally modulated optical signals (SMOSs) polarized along the principal axes of the PMF is measured by a Kerr phase-interrogator, which leads to the group birefringence of the PMF. As the laser wavelength of the SMOSs varies, the group birefringence as a function of the laser wavelength is obtained, and the GBD is calculated as the derivative of the group birefringence with respect to the laser wavelength. The proposed method is experimentally demonstrated by characterizations of a Panda PMF with high GBD and an elliptical core PMF with low GBD, and its performance is analyzed. The proposed method eliminates the impact of the laser coherent length and allows for characterizing the GBD of PMFs that are tens of kilometers long.
D-Shaped Polarization Maintaining Fiber Sensor for Strain and Temperature Monitoring