Distributed PMD measurement in mode-coupling situation based on polarization optical time-domain reflectometer

In high-speed communication systems, polarization mode dispersion (PMD) has become the main factor restricting communication capacity and distance. At present, optical fiber communication systems are developing towards the trend of high-speed and large-capacity such as 800G and 1.6T, which makes the compensation for PMD loss in the system more important. Therefore, we verified a distributed PMD measurement method based on the pulse width sweeping of polarization optical time domain reflectometry (POTDR), and modified the application of this method in the case of mode coupling, which can segmentally estimate the differential group delay (DGD) values of the optical fiber.