High-resolution measurement of differential mode delay of few-mode fiber using phase reference technique for swept-frequency interferometry

A method is described for the high-resolution measurement of the differential mode delay (DMD) of few-mode fiber based on the frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) technique. With the conventional approach, a wider optical bandwidth is required for higher resolution, however, the effect of chromatic dispersion becomes critical and limits the actual resolution. This paper proposes and demonstrates a phase reference technique for FMCW signals that achieves high-resolution measurements without increasing the optical bandwidth. We can also further improve the resolution of our proposed method by reducing the phase fluctuation with signal averaging. The feasibility of the proposed method is confirmed experimentally with several kinds of FMFs including an offset-spliced fiber where mode couplings occur.