Measurement of optical fiber dispersion and dispersion slope using a pair of short optical pulses and Fourier transform property of dispersive medium

There are several methods to measure the optical fiber dispersion and dispersion slope. They are, generally, divided into time and frequency domain methods. The modulation phase shift technique (MPS) is a frequency domain method providing the highest accuracy. Time domain methods have lagged behind their frequency domain counterparts. Recently, a paper by Tong et al., used the spatial-temporal analogy to improve the time domain measurement past the previous simple minded pulse broadening measurement over the known length of the fiber. In spite of marked improvement, the time domain measurement still remains inferior to MPS. We show that by using a pair of short optical pulses instead of a single pulse, one can alleviate some of the previous shortcomings of time domain methods. The new method achieves excellent agreement with the frequency domain technique. (C) 2001 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.