Spectral polarimetry with a differential group delay bias

We show that the addition of a polarization controller and bias differential group delay to a spectral polarimeter increases the amount of polarization information that can be extracted from a Stokes spectrum measurement. We use this biased spectral polarimetry on 40-Gbit/s signals to measure the polarization mode dispersion of the optical fiber through which they propagate. Our measurements do not require any control of the polarization at the fiber input. Averaging measurements from several settings of the polarization controller yields improved accuracy, and, after data rejection is applied, both the accuracy and the number of valid data points is increased when using several measurements. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.