Frequency domain measurements of dispersion in multimode optical fibers

Abstract

A newly developed technique for directly measuring fiber dispersion in the frequency domain as a function of wavelength is described. A number of germanium- and boron-doped fibers have been examined. The least dispersive borosilicate graded-index fiber has a 1-dB bandwidth of 1 GHz, after 1.07 km of propagation at λ=908 nm. Frequency domain measurements were inverted into the time domain after assuming that the phase of a power transfer function could be calculated from its amplitude spectrum.