Details of Grant

EPSRC Reference:

GR/J45114/01

Title:

POLARISATION DISPERSION LIMITATIONS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF LONG HAUL MULTIGIGABIT FIBRE LINKS

Principal Investigator:

Other Investigators:

Walker, Professor S	McGuiness, Dr R	Holt, Professor AR
Holt, Dr A	Bebbington, Dr D	O'Mahony, Professor M

Researcher Co-Investigators:

Project Partners:

Department:

Computing and Electronic Systems1

Organisation:

University of Essex

Scheme:

Standard Research (Pre-FEC)

Starts:

01 December 1993

Ends:

30 November 1995

Value (£):

96,518

EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:

Optical Communications

EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:

Communications

Related Grants:

Panel History:

Summary on Grant Application Form

1. Experimental and theoretical investigation of polarisation mode dispersion (PMD) effects in long fibre links. 2. Investigation of the design of a polarisation sensitive optical time domain reflectometer (P-OTDR) based on the Essex Polarimeter.Progress:Objective l.The experimental system, based on the Essex Polarimeter, has been constructed and is now being used for measurements. As far as we are aware, in terms of sensitivity, dynamic range, measurement accuracy, noise and speed this is the highest performance polarisation sampling system now in existence. An invited talk on its performance was presented at the 16th meeting of National Physical Laboratorys Fibre Measurement Club on 7.11.94.On the PMD modelling side the situation have been changed dramatically, during the last 12 months, by the advent of the so-called spun fibre. So far, in published literature, theoretical modelling of PMD effects have been confined to describing the linear birefringence in fibres, inclusion of circular birefringence being too intractable to handle. For a complete description of the picture, however, it is essential to include both types of birefringence in order to understand, what now appears to be, the significant role of circular birefringence in conventional and spun fibre. In December '94 we made a successful start on this difficult but important problem.Objective 2.The initial approach was to use a cascade of EDFAs to bring the backscatter signal level up to a point where it could be time-gated on to an Essex Polarimeter designed to have high bandwidth at the expense of sensitivity. We have investigated this approach in depth and have come to the conclusion that the noise accumulation properties of chains of EDFAs make this approach not a feasible one. We then proceeded to devise a completely new approach based on some ideas which have been successfully used in the past in polarimetric weather radar studies. We have made a detailed design study of this approach which shows it to be a practicable way of solving this problem. This is the subject of a follow-up EPSRC application (Ref. GR/K49454) submitted in December 94.

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Organisation Website:

http://www.sx.ac.uk