Abstract

A single-mode fiber actually propagates two modes with their respective states of polarization. Due to birefringence, these two polarization modes will have slightly different group velocities, and hence they may interfere.¹ This interference gives rise to fluctuations of the microbending loss which appears as unwanted noise. Nonlinear distortion may also occur since there is a simultaneous modulation of the laser diode frequency and of the polarization selective loss.² In this paper, theoretical results are presented for the worst-case de signal to noise ratio (dc-SNR) and the relative second harmonic distortion R_2|| due to microbending in single-mode fiber systems.

© 1985 Optical Society of America