Implementation of Polarization-Sensitive OFDR With a Digital Coherent Transceiver

We have demonstrated a polarization-sensitive OFDR which uses a commercially available digital coherent optical transceiver to generate a continuous-phase linear frequency chirp by carrier-suppressed single-sideband modulation. The linearity of the digitally generated chirp was experimentally verified, confirming the suitability of the transceiver for OFDR sensing applications. A phase and polarization diverse coherent homodyne receiver recovers the state of polarization (SOP) of backscattered light using an identically chirped local oscillator. With 26 GHz chirping bandwidth, a spatial resolution of approximately 5 mm was achieved in 200 μs. We experimentally measured position dependent relative magnitude and orientation of stress-induced birefringence along the fiber.